The Montgomery Advertiser reports: A contender for a local seat in the Alabama House of Represen­tatives is up in arms about a poll run by Republicans in his dis­trict that he said inaccurately tells people he defended corrupt politicians and sued local busi­nesses as an attorney.

Democrat Joe Hubbard is challenging Republican state Rep. David Grimes for the Dis­trict 73 seat.

Hubbard has voiced his con­cerns that the question asking if people would be more or less likely to support him if they knew "Joe Hubbard is a lawyer who has sued local businesses and has defended many corrupt Montgomery politicians."

Hubbard said he has never represented Montgomery pub­lic officials or sued local busi­nesses. He considers it a push poll -- a type of poll that, instead of being done to obtain opinions, asks loaded and unfounded questions that contain negative information about a candidate in an attempt to influence vot­ers. Read the whole story --> District 73 candidate upset over questions in GOP poll | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

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The Birmingham News reported on 18 August: Bessemer Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson is distributing a flier for her mayoral campaign that includes the top photo. Davidson claims Alabama football coach Nick Saban is endorsing her campaign, but the Alabama athletics staff says no endorsement was made. Davidson acknowledged Tuesday night a photo shown below of Saban and his wife, Terry, from 2007 was altered to include her.

For a political hopeful in Alabama, it could be the ultimate endorsement -- a show of support from University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.

Bessemer Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson, who is running for mayor of the city, claims she secured Saban's endorsement of her campaign three weeks ago. Davidson printed it on a color campaign flier that shows her and the coach smiling side by side on a golf course.

But University of Alabama athletics officials on Tuesday said there is no such endorsement. And the photo of Davidson and Saban together is not real, but digitally altered from another photo. ...

Davidson, when contacted about the campaign ad and photo on Tuesday afternoon, at first said the image of her and Saban together was real and taken about three weeks ago. However, when presented later with a 2007 photo of Saban and his wife that appears to be the base photo onto which Davidson's image was added, the candidate acknowledged that her image was digitally added to the 2007 photo. Read the whole story --> Bessemer mayoral candidate Dorothy Davidson claims Nick Saban endorsement, passing out fliers with altered photo | al.com

And on 19 August: The man who has been managing Bessemer Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson's campaign for mayor this afternoon said he tricked Davidson into believing she had an endorsement from University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.

Kevin Morris, 35, said he is responsible for the campaign flier that features a digitally altered picture of Davidson and Saban and touts an endorsement by the coach.

Morris said he told Davidson the photo of the coach and his wife, Terry, was actually of Saban and his mother. He said he told Davidson that Saban had OK'd the altering of the photograph.

"I lied," Morris said. "She (Davidson) didn't do anything wrong." -- Read the whole story --> http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/08/bessemer_mayoral_candidates_ca.html

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: The Alabama Democratic Conference has filed a complaint against Circuit Court Judge Patricia Warner over what the organization's chairman said are questionable and misleading campaign tactics.

Joe Reed, chairman of the ADC, has filed a complaint with the Judicial Inquiry Commission, alleging that a campaign flier produced by Warner as part of her re-election campaign improperly implied the state organization had endorsed her.

Reed said the action was a violation of the state's fair campaign practices law and the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics. ...

A complaint to the Judicial Inquiry Commission is serious business. The commission's mandated function is to investigate allegations of misconduct in office, violations of the Canons of Judicial Ethics or of disability made against any judge of the court, according to a document of the state Records Commission. -- Read the whole article --> ADC files complaint against judge over ad | montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser

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The Sand Mountain Reporter reports: Alabama House District 26 Republican Candidate Kerry Rich contributed $250 to competitor Peggie Haney?s campaign, according to reports filed with the Secretary of State?s Office.

Rich said he was required to make the contribution to Haney?s campaign to compensate her for radio time because he remained on the air at his radio station 88.5 WJIA after entering the race for the seat. ...

According to the FCC, if a radio station allows one candidate to broadcast over its airways, all candidates are entitled to an equal opportunity to broadcast on radio stations and the station cannot censor what any of the candidate’s ads says.

But, there is no requirement for a candidate to go off the air once he starts campaigning for office. Read the whole story --> Sand Mountain Reporter

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: A recent automated call from the Alabama state teachers' union reminding its members that the Republican primary is open to all voters drew criticism Friday from Republican gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne.

Byrne, who has publicly feuded with the Alabama Education Association, said the calls were meant to sabotage the GOP runoff and keep him out of the general election. ...

Wade Perry, who heads the AEA's Mobile chapter, disputed Byrne's claim that the call was meant to sabotage him.

Alabama Education Association President Anita Gibson, who recorded the message, simply told recipients that the Republican primary was open, Perry said. Recipients were then asked which runoff they would vote in, if they planned to vote at all, he said. Read the whole story --> Bradley Byrne: Automated calls by AEA meant to sabotage GOP runoff | al.com

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The Opelika-Auburn News reports: Opelika Postmaster Terry Dozier reported Friday that some political flyers have been distributed in area mailboxes without using postage.

"It's not widespread, but we've seen a little," he said. "When one candidate does it, everyone wants to know why they can't do it."

Candidates' names were not given.

Section PO11.2.2 of the Domestic Mail Manual reads, 'Any mailable matter not bearing postage found in, upon, attached to, supported by, or hung from the private mail receptacles is subject to the payment of the same postage as would be paid if carried by mail." -- Read the whole story --> Postmaster: Campaign flyers distributed without paying postage | Opelika-Auburn News

I wonder when Glenn Beck will denounce the postal monopoly our right to campaign without paying a "Stamp Tax."

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The Arab Tribune reports: Ed Teal, Republican candidate for Marshall County Sheriff has filed a federal civil lawsuit for "cyber squatting."

Teal claims that Marshall County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Doug Gibbs "cyber squatted" by registering numerous website domain names containing all or part of Teal's name. The action is not a criminal act.

The lawsuit basically says that Gibbs bought 19 website addresses that Teal could have used for his campaign, such as "www.edtealforsheriff.com" -- Read the whole story --> Teal suing chief deputy for blocking web names

Note: "Arab" is pronounced A'-rab.

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The Montgomery Advertiser reports: A teachers' union headed by Democrats bankrolling the True Republican PAC? And that PAC blanketing the airwaves with ads attacking Republican gubernatorial front-runner Bradley Byrne for associating with - Democrats?

Are you confused?

Not if you are a close student of Alabama politics.

"It is interesting, but it is not confusing," said former Congressman Glen Browder, a retired Jacksonville State University political science professor. "It all makes sense for somebody who knows how this game is played." Read the whole story --> AEA is hedging its bets in race for Alabama governor | al.com

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Marketplace reports: Welcome to the world of Google-powered elections. The company calls that tactic a network blast. In Massachusetts, Willington says those blasts cost about $25,000 a day. Far less than TV and worth every penny.

WILLINGTON: People think Google is a search engine, that's just one part of it. It's the new TV. It's not a niche media market anymore, it is mass media.

Most political campaigns spend at most 3 to 4 percent of their budget on online ads. The Brown campaign spent almost 10 percent -- about $250,000. It's the biggest success so far in Google's campaign to rule the online political advertising business. In 2007, the company started a small team to help politicians tweak their messages online. -- Read or listen to the whole story --> A future with Google-powered elections | Marketplace From American Public Media

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Four bills are up for hearing today in the Alabama House Committee on Constitution and Elections:

HB 30 -- Elections, overseas absentee voting, Electronic Overseas Voting Advisory Committee, established to advise whether secure electronic means of voting available, duties of absentee election manager, overseas voter certificate required, Secretary of State to implement rules

HB 85 -- Campaign contributions, PAC to PAC transfers, prohibited, Sec. 17-5-15 am'd.

HB 129 -- Electioneering communications and paid political advertising, disclosure of source of funding required, exceptions, contributions by political committees further provided for, Secs. 17-5-2, 17-5-8, 17-5-12 am'd.; Act 2009-751, 2009 Reg. Sess. am'd.

HB 145 -- Elections, write-in candidates, registration with judge of probate or Secretary of State prior to election required, compliance with Fair Campaign Practices Act and State Ethics Law required, Sec. 17-6-28 am'd

Note -- to view the Alison system, you must be using Internet Explorer or the IE Tab add-on to Firefox.

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The Huntsville Times reports: A state appeals court Friday reinstated five felony charges against former Secretary of State Nancy Worley, who is accused of using her office to influence the votes of five employees in her office.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Truman M. Hobbs Jr. ruled on July 11, 2007, that the law under which Worley was indicted was "overly broad and unconstitutional" as applied in her case. ...

The felony charges stemmed from a law forbidding a public official from using his or her authority or position to try to influence the vote or political action of anyone.

The charges against Worley grew out of campaign letters, campaign contribution envelopes and bumper stickers sent to the five workers.

In her letter - on campaign stationery - Worley wrote, "I will be honored if you will attach the enclosed bumper sticker to your vehicle's bumper or rear window." She also wrote that "if you chose to support another candidate, you have every right to make that decision without any problems from me." -- Read the whole article --> State appeals court reinstates5 felony charges against Worley - al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: Jefferson County officials are asking that an e-mail from an employee running for a seat on the County Commission be investigated to see if state laws prohibiting the use of county property for political activity were violated.

County attorneys say Ed Henson, the county's chief deputy tax assessor, sent a message Sept. 23 from his county e-mail account to "all users" announcing he would be on leave and then retiring from the tax assessor's office. It also said he would be a "candidate for the Jefferson County commissioner in District 4."

Henson said he filed papers Tuesday to run for the seat now held by County Commission President Bettye Fine Collins.

The e-mail has been turned over to the district attorney's office, said assistant county attorney Charles Wagner. -- Read the whole story --> Jefferson County seeks district attorney probe into chief deputy tax assessor's e-mail - al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: Bright House Cable Networks will broadcast a series of public forums featuring candidates in the Oct. 6 City Council runoff.

The cable operator is responding to a call for fairness from several council challengers who say the sitting council members have an unfair advantage each Tuesday during the televised meetings. ...

Rafferty and Elias Hendricks wrote to the cable company asking for air time to balance exposure given to the council members, saying the council meetings amount to free publicity for the incumbents. -- Read the whole story --> Bright House Cable to broadcast series of public forums featuring candidates in the Oct. 6 City Council runoff - al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: With six weeks before the Birmingham City Council runoff, two of the four candidates seeking to unseat incumbents say televised council meetings are tantamount to free campaign advertising, giving their opponents an unfair advantage.

Kim Rafferty and Elias Hendricks have asked Bright House Networks for free air time to present their platforms on the public access channel because their competitors are on television each Tuesday.

Two other candidates, Sheila Tyson and Leroy Bandy, said they support the request. ...

"We all know that City Council broadcasts are not to show the business of the city, but to show who is the best actor or actress in a comedy or drama series," Rafferty said. "Whether the incumbent is good or bad on TV, they still have that exposure. We need to level the playing field for everyone." -- Read the whole story at --> Birmingham City Council hopefuls want free TV air time too - al.com

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The Capitol Fax Blog reports the Rep. Mark Kirk has tweeted at least twice about his then-current active duty in the Navy at the National Military Command Center. Capitol Fax has updated the blog post to include the correct DOD regulation, which I reproduced below in full. Flip over to part 4.3.3 to get to the stuff about being a candidate while on active duty ("AD" in military-speak).

Read the whole blog post at --> The Capitol Fax Blog » *** UPDATED x1 *** Should campaign have posted while candidate was on duty?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17858528/DOD-Directive-Political-Activities-by-Members-of-the-Armed-Forces

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TPMmuckraker reports: Has the New Hampshire phone-jamming case finally come to a quiet end?

Federal prosecutors have dropped their case against former regional NRSC official James Tobin in connection with a GOP plot to jam the phone lines of the New Hampshire Democratic party on Election Day 2002, reports the Associated Press.

Tobin had been acquitted of involvement in the plot -- for which two GOP consultants have served jail time -- but was being tried on new charges of lying to investigators. A court dismissed those charges, and last week an appeals court rejected prosecutors' appeal. --> Read the whole report at Feds Drop New Hampshire Phone-Jamming Case | TPMMuckraker

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The Birmingham News reports: Several televi­sion stations have stopped running ads from a pro-bingo group that at­tempt to link Gov. Bob Riley to Choctaw tribal casinos in Mississippi.

Riley's deputy legal adviser sent the stations a letter threatening legal action if the ads aired by the Sweet Home Alabama Coalition -- a group pushing a bingo bill in the Alabama Legislature -- were not pulled. The commercial suggests Riley opposes the bill because he received cam­paign donations from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which op­erates casinos in Mississippi. -- TV stations stop pro-bingo group's ads linking Riley to Choctaws

Wikipedia says, "The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized."

Riley may have wanted to stop the incorrect (he says) information, but he managed to spread it around more. As I post this, Google News lists 99 versions of the story.

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The Bangor Daily News reports: A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed the most recent charges against James Tobin, 48, of Bangor that alleged he lied to the FBI about his role in a phone jamming scheme on Election Day 2002 in New Hampshire.

U.S. District Judge George Z. Singal agreed with attorneys for the former GOP political organizer that bringing the charges in U.S. District Court in Maine after he had been vindicated on far more serious ones in New Hampshire qualified as a vindictive prosecution.

“The vindictive prosecution doctrine imposes critical ‘constitutional limits’ upon the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Singal wrote in his 12-page decision. “Those limits protect all current and future criminal defendants, including those whose conduct may be properly described as ‘insidious’ or ‘thoroughly bad.’ And by filing more severe charges following Tobin’s successful appeal without sufficient justification, the government exceeded those here.” ...

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 2007. It found that the telephone harassment statute was not a good fit for what Tobin had been convicted of doing. ...

The latest charges against Tobin alleged that he lied when he told the FBI that it was McGee’s idea to contact Raymond for assistance in executing the plan. Tobin also lied, according to the indictment, when he told the FBI that Raymond and McGee already had spoken when Tobin talked with Raymond about the plan. -- District judge clears Tobin

Hat tip to TPM Muckraker.

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The New York Times reports: With heavy voter turnout expected on Election Day, both parties are amassing thousands and thousands of lawyers to keep an eye on the polls.

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is expected to send at least 5,000 lawyers to Florida alone. The first recruitment e-mail message the campaign sent out nationally received 6,000 responses from lawyers willing to volunteer. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain’s campaign has lined up “Lawyers for McCain” to spread out at polling places in closely contested states as advocates for the ticket.

Both campaigns plan to use the lawyers to protect their supporters at the polls, help untangle ballot problems and run to court should litigation be necessary. Given the heated ballot challenges in the 2000 and 2004 elections, getting legal talent on the ground on Election Day is becoming as common a tool for the campaigns as advertising and polling.

“Both sides are assembling literally thousands of lawyers at the state level,” said Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance lawyer at Skadden, Arps in Washington who represents both parties. “We’re not talking about Laurence Tribe or David Boies, but there will be no shortage of lawyers looking for any kind of imperfection in the process.” -- Both Campaigns Enlist Lawyers to Watch Polls - NYTimes.com

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Politico reports: If Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin does not become vice president on Nov. 4, she can look forward to a sweet payday for a memoir about her unlikely VP run should she choose to write one. But she might have to forgo hundreds of thousands of dollars in lucrative speaking fees and perhaps even millions more should she be asked to host a cable or network television show.

Palin, who is expected to serve out her term as governor, which runs through 2010, would likely be allowed to write a book about the VP race under Alaska state laws that govern outside pay of government officials. But restrictions under the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act could disallow her from accepting speaking fees or a salary for television appearances while she’s serving in state government.

Section 39.52.170 of the ethics law declares that public employees “may not render services to benefit a personal or financial interest or engage in or accept employment outside the agency which the employee serves, if the outside employment or service is incompatible or in conflict with the proper discharge of official duties.” In addition, “the head of a principal executive department of the state may not accept employment for compensation outside the agency that the executive head serves.” -- Law may preclude TV stardom for Palin

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Newsweek reports: The disclosure that the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothing and accessories for vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family set off recriminations among GOP officials—and, more important, party donors. ...

The decision to greenlight the purchases was made after Palin arrived in Minneapolis for the Republican Party convention. Campaign aides quickly concluded that she lacked the necessary wardrobe for two months of intensive national campaigning. "She didn't have the fancy pantsuits that Hillary Clinton has," explained one staffer (who, like most others interviewed for this account, declined to be identified speaking about the episode). The problem was figuring out how to pay for new dresswear: the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, co-authored by the GOP candidate, tightened the rules to ban using campaign funds for personal clothing. While Jeff Larson, a veteran GOP consultant who headed the party's "host" committee, provided his credit card for the Palin family shopping spree, he was directed to send the bills over to the Republican National Committee (which was not covered by the clothing ban in McCain-Feingold). RNC officials were not happy about it. "We were explicitly directed by the campaign to pay these costs," said one senior RNC official who also requested anonymity. After at first declining to comment, a McCain spokeswoman said the clothes would be donated to charity after the campaign was over. -- Not The Change They Wanted

Hat-tip to TalkLeft for the link.

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The Birmingham News reports: The polls aren't open yet, but Alabama Democrats and Republicans are preparing their legal teams to deal with any problems that might crop up on Election Day.

Voter registration surged past 2.9 million as election officials handled a flurry of last-minute applications Friday, the final day to sign up to vote in the Nov. 4 general election. With a record turnout expected, officials with Alabama political parties said they want their legal teams on guard for disenfranchisement or shenanigans on Election Day.

"We're on the precipice of a historic election," Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham said. "With record registrations and anticipated record voter turnout, we are anticipating that polling sites may be overwhelmed and that today's voter rolls may not reflect the true number of Alabama citizens who are legally entitled to cast a ballot."

Democratic Party attorney James Anderson said Friday that more than 200 volunteer lawyers - including a lawyer from the Democratic National Committee - will be ready to deal with any problems that come up at the polls. The party is setting up situation rooms in Birmingham and Montgomery to handle complaints. ...

Republicans have assembled their own legal team. Alabama Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard said a lawyer will be stationed in every county on Nov. 4. He said his major concern is preventing ballot fraud. -- Voter registration closes with record numbers, Alabama political parties to send in lawyers on Election Day - al.com

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Democracy Corps reports: With the country poised for its second wave election, Republican supporters are on a different page and disconnected from the rest of the country. That helps explain John McCain’s implausible close to the campaign and perhaps foretells difficulties Republicans will face dealing with the aftermath. In this special national survey with an enlarged sample of self-identified Republicans and independents who identify with Republicans, we asked the question, “who is to blame for John McCain’s possible defeat?” Republicans believe McCain will have lost because of a hostile mainstream media, economic events beyond their control and Democrats having more money and resources. Few have begun to examine bigger issues, though their views of the current campaign and the future suggest a party very out of touch with unfolding events.

* While a sizeable majority of voters say Republicans have lost in 2006 and 2008 because they have been “too conservative,” a sizeable plurality of Republicans say, it is because they have “not been conservative enough.”
* Over three-quarters of Republicans say Palin was good choice, while a majority of the electorate says the opposite. ...

Those responses are not surprising when you ask Republicans the cause of their defeats: 65 percent say the mainstream media favoring Obama, followed distantly by economic events outside anyone’s control (29 percent) and Obama and the Democrats having more money (25 percent). Only 12 percent thought that McCain wanting to continue Bush’s policies was the culprit, only 10 percent pointed to Palin and only 8 percent suggested the big spending and deficits were to blame.

The key issue from this special survey of Republicans is whether or not the party is connected enough to what is happening in the country to work with the new leaders of the country and to begin the process of self-examination necessary for political change. -- Democracy Corps: The Republican Disconnect

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The New York Times reports: The presidential debate had barely ended Wednesday night when Kristin Marshall had her ballot on her lap, pen in hand, ready to vote. Three friends, all supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, had their ballots, too. ...

With Election Day less than three weeks away, the number of people voting by mail has exploded in Colorado, a closely divided state up for grabs in November. Nearly half of the state’s registered voters have requested ballots by mail, compelling the Obama and McCain campaigns to kick-start their get-out-the-vote efforts — and devise new and imaginative ones.

All across the state, the traditional Election Day sprint by campaign workers has changed into a nearly monthlong marathon, made all the more pressing by the tightness of the race. ...

Mail-in voting has put down its deepest roots in Oregon, Washington and California, but election experts say the significance of Colorado’s mail-in voting this year has been amplified because the state is one of the few tossups left on the electoral map.

Previously, voting by mail in Colorado has been most common in rural areas, where distances make a trip to the polls problematic and Republican voters usually dominate. But the clerk and recorder for Weld County, Steve Moreno, said the Obama campaign, in particular, had embraced the idea of voting-by-mail this year and met with him about how to expand the numbers. -- Rise in Voting by Mail Transforms Race in Colorado - Series - NYTimes.com

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The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform states in a newly issued report: This report examines the operations of the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Bush Administration. It finds that the White House used the political affairs office to orchestrate an aggressive strategy to use taxpayer-funded trips to help elect Republican candidates for public office. From January 1, 2006, until the mid-term elections on November 7, 2006, cabinet secretaries and other senior officials traveled to over 300 events recommended by the political affairs office. All of these events were held with Republican candidates, and in most cases, the travel costs were paid for with federal funds.

President Bush’s first director of the political affairs office was Ken Mehlman. In an interview with the Committee, he stated that “a big part” of his job was to “help elect allies of the President.” He also said it was his view that “one legally could have, in the Office of Political Affairs, focused entirely on simply promoting … the President’s allies.” He told the Committee that he consulted closely about “nearly all aspects of what I was doing” with the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales.

The view that White House officials could legally promote the election of Republican congressional candidates led to an extensive effort prior to the 2006 elections. From January 1 to November 7, 2006, Bush Administration officials participated in 326 events with Republican candidates suggested by the political affairs office, more than one per day. Cabinet officials and agency heads personally attended 306 of these events. Of these 326 events, 303 required travel outside of Washington, D.C. Thirty-two officials from 12 cabinet agencies and three independent offices journeyed to 35 states to make appearances with 99 Republicans running for election in 2006. Even offices with statutory provisions prohibiting political activity, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, were enlisted in the election effort. -- The Activities of the White House Office of Political Affairs

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TPM Muckraker reports: Former Republican operative James Tobin has been indicted for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the bureau's investigation of a phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire in 2002, according to court filings examined by TPMmuckraker.

... Here's the indictment. It contains two counts, both related to making false statements to the FBI during its investigation into the New Hampshire GOP's effort to jam the phones of the Democratic Party on Election Day 2002.

It charges, in part:

"Tobin stated that when he first called Allen Raymond to discuss the phone-jamming scheme, Raymond and Charles McGee had already spoken with each other about the plans. In fact, as Tobin well knew, Tobin spoke with Raymond before Raymond was contacted by McGee, and Tobin requested that Raymond assist McGee with the plan."

McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, and Raymond, a GOP consultant, both were convicted and served jail time in connection with the scheme.

But Tobin's own 2005 conviction relating to the scheme was thrown out on appeal in 2007, and he was acquitted. -- TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Ex-GOP Operative in New Hampshire Indicted

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John Lewis writes on Politico: As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate.

George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better. -- The Arena - Politico's daily debate with policymakers and opinion shapers | Politico.com

By the way, compare John Lewis to the comments of David Gergen on The Colbert Report.

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The Huntsville Times reports: The Alabama State Bar on Thursday condemned "swift boat" tactics that are being used against the Democratic nominee for the state Supreme Court.

The state bar said a telephone "push poll" is being used to "spread misinformation and disinformation about one of the candidates running for a seat on the state Supreme Court."

Some voters are getting "push poll" telephone calls claiming the state bar has conducted a judicial evaluation that gave Deborah Bell Paseur an "F" grade and that the bar's membership is primarily affiliated with the Democratic Party.

A push poll is a dirty tricks campaign technique in which an organization tries to influence a voter under the guise of conducting a poll. Instead, it's a form of telemarketing-based propaganda. -- State bar condemns push poll attack on Paseur - al.com

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Democracy Corps reports: Barack Obama once again won tonight’s debate, and undecided voters are prepared to move toward his candidacy, according to Democracy Corps research conducted around tonight’s second presidential debate. Unlike the first debate, when Democracy Corps research showed half the voters remaining undecided and the two candidates splitting the other half, the vote following the second debate showed a decisive shift toward Senator Obama. This debate was a clear victory for Obama who made major gains not just in the vote but also on personal favorability and key attributes like ‘has what it takes to be President,’ which ultimately drove undecided voters into his column.

Democracy Corps conducted dial testing of the debate with 50 undecided voters in Henderson, Nevada, followed by focus group discussions with voters who shifted toward one of the candidates after seeing the debate. These voters were evenly split in terms of partisan identification – 26 percent Democrat, 48 percent Independent, and 26 percent Republican – but 50 percent voted for Bush in 2004, compared to 34 percent who voted for Kerry. -- Second Presidential Debate: Undecided Voters Move Decisively Toward Obama

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NPR's Morning Edition has this story: Millions of newly registered voters are expected to turn out for next month's presidential election. Supporters of Barack Obama have been e-mailing and text-messaging them about what not to wear. Depending on what state they live in, if voters show up at the polls with a candidate's name on a T-shirt or hat, they could be turned away.

The elections office in Horry County, S.C., bustles as people stream in on one of the last days to register to vote.

Elections manager Lynn Marlowe says if one of these new voters tries to cast a ballot wearing a political hat, button or T-shirt, he or she will be asked to take it off or cover it up. -- At Polls In S.C., Don't Wear Politics On Your Sleeve : NPR

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The Washington Post reports: With a month to go before Election Day, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, touched down here Sunday for an unexpected rally in a state that President Bush won by 22 percentage points in 2004.

In early September, even as it was shifting resources out of other traditionally Republican states to key electoral battlegrounds, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign sent 15 paid staffers to Nebraska, a state that has backed a Democrat for president just once since 1936. ...

Both camps have their eyes on the same reward: a single electoral vote that could prove pivotal in determining the next president.

Nebraska is one of only two states that award electoral votes by congressional district, rather than on a winner-take-all basis. Obama strategists see an opportunity in the 2nd District, where disaffection with Washington and strong Democratic voter-registration efforts are narrowing the Republican advantage. -- Nebraska Becomes Unlikely Battleground - washingtonpost.com

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The Alabama Democratic Party announces: This year we have an unprecedented opportunity to elect Democrats from the top of the ticket to the bottom. The political winds are at our backs and we can change America for the better, but we need your help! In order to achive our goals we are launching an online Neighbor-to-Neighbor Canvassing Tool.

This tool will allow every Democrat to:

-Sign up and create an online account
-Receive a list of registered voters in their neighborhood
-Print walk lists of the registered voters in their neighborhood
-Print flyers for various Democratic nominees
-And, most importantly, record the repsonses or "IDs" from specific survey questions

Access the Canvassing Tool here.

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Democracy Corps reports on reaction to last night's debate: With Barack Obama gaining momentum, John McCain needed to change the dynamic in the race during tonight’s debate and to shift the focus of the campaign onto friendlier terrain. Instead, Democracy Corps research finds that McCain essentially held his ground in this debate, while Obama emerged with higher personal favorability and increased confidence in his ability to handle critical foreign policy and national security issues.

During and after the debate, Democracy Corps conducted a set of dial and focus groups among 45 undecided voters in St. Louis, Missouri. These voters had an unmistakably Republican tilt, voting for President Bush by a 2-to-1 margin in 2004 and self-identifying as 33 percent Republican and 27 percent Democrat. But playing on his perceived strength of national security and before a friendly audience, McCain could only manage a draw among this group. Of our 45 initial undecided voters, a quarter moved to Obama and a quarter to McCain after the debate with the rest remaining undecided. Moreover, by a 38 to 27 percent margin these voters said that Obama won this debate.

A look at the underlying numbers shows that Obama made important gains that could endure through Election Day. These undecided voters had a strong positive reaction to Obama on a personal level. Before the debate, just 40 percent viewed Obama positively, but this skyrocketed to 69 percent after the debate – a remarkable 29-point gain that left him more personally popular than McCain despite this group’s conservative leanings. He also made large strides on being seen as independent, from 44 percent to 65 percent. And in head-to-head matchups against McCain, Obama made significant gains on who “shares your values” and is “on your side." -- First Presidential Debate: Obama Makes Important Personal and National Security Gains

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Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on NPR: John Hibbing, a researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been studying whether people's political beliefs might be linked to biological traits such as their startle reflex.

He says traditionally, political scientists have assumed that social influences are the main determinant of people's voting patterns. ...

Hibbing and his colleagues found that they could predict what a person's political beliefs would be based on how strongly the person's body responded to the alarming images and sounds, according to a report in the journal Science.

"Those people who seemed to have a stronger reaction to threat were more likely to favor things like military spending, the death penalty, the Patriot Act," says Hibbing. -- Could Political Views Be Driven By Biology? : NPR

Cool picture of the spider on a woman's face.

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Peter Overby reports on NPR: As the Nov. presidential election draws nearer, ad by independent political groups are already on the air. John McCain and Barack Obama have said that these groups should stay out of the election process. But there seems to be no way to stop them. -- Independent Political Groups Return With 527 Ads : NPR

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The Liberal Democrats came up with this great idea. Here's the way the Press Association described it: Voters will be bombarded with a quarter of a million automated telephone calls featuring a recording of Nick Clegg as part of a new Liberal Democrat attempt to canvass public opinion of its leader's policies.

Households in 50 marginal seats will be targeted by the US-style cold-calling technique shortly after Mr Clegg delivers a keynote conference speech in which he will declare Labour "dead" and his party the only alternative. -- Cold-calling Clegg eyes key voters

But, as The Herald explains: The SNP [Scottish Nationalist Party] and the Conservatives have weighed in to the LibDem telesales debacle, claiming that the masterplan to ring up 250,000 voters last night with an automated Nick Clegg, multiple choice, cold call is quite illegal.

Something to do with the 2003 Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and quite a lot to do with the fact that the LibDems complained about the SNP doing the same thing in 2005.

M'learned friends will recall that on that occasion the Information Commissioner ruled that what the SNP were doing was illegal and took out an enforcement notice. -- Nationalists Remember The Illegality Of Cold Call Masterplan (from The Herald )

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A Washington Post report begins: Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are holding a campaign rally at Fairfax High School tomorrow morning in violation of a school system policy, prompting some teachers and community leaders to question district officials.

According to the Fairfax County policy, which addresses how the community can use school facilities, "School buildings and grounds may not be used for campaign activities during school hours."

Superintendent Jack D. Dale said he made an exception to the policy because he thought it would be a good learning experience for students. "We are not participating in a political rally," he said. "We are letting our kids have new educational opportunities." He alerted the School Board about the event yesterday during a meeting at the school administration building. ...

Dale said he made the same policy exception for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Obama held a town hall meeting at Robinson Secondary School in July, with about 2,000 participants. School was not in session, but an arts program and some other activities were being held in other parts of the school, Dale said. The policy does not address summer school activities. -- School Use For McCain, Palin Rally Bucks Rule - washingtonpost.com

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A Washington Post report begins: Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship. ...

Yet an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest before it starts, calling the ADF's "Pulpit Initiative" an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.

Backed by three former top IRS officials, the group also wants the IRS to determine whether the nonprofit ADF is risking its own tax-exempt status by organizing an "inappropriate, unethical and illegal" series of political endorsements. -- Ban on Political Endorsements by Pastors Targeted - washingtonpost.com

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Proving once again that election lawyers need to know many different areas of law, David Giacalone at the f/k/a blog reports: Lawyer Kurt Mausert wants to be Family Court judge in Saratoga County, New York. Since his website went up on April 1st, it has boasted this rather uninspiring slogan, along with the usual copyright notice:

Although most family men really hate whining kids, and he is a father of four (ages 8 to 26), Mausert is loudly and plaintively complaining that his opponent — incumbent judge Courtenay W. Hall — has “stolen” his slogan and violated the copyright held on it by the Mausert election Committee. See “Saratoga County Family Court candidates battle over slogan” (Schenectady Daily Gazette, Sept. 5, 2008); “Whose line is it, anyway?” (TU Local Politics weblog, Sept. 2, 2008). A few months ago, Mausert also complained that the Independent Party treated him unfairly by not interviewing Mausert before choosing to endorse Judge Hall. The candidates are fighting for the Independence Party endorsement in a primary election on Tuesday. (See The Saratogian). -- whiny “family man” wants to be Family Court judge — and to copyright the slogan

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Oh, the gnashing of teeth among various pundits about Palin's inexperience (see DailyKos for a small roundup of newspaper editorials). And attacks from David Frum and Ramesh Ponnuru on National Review's website.

Compare her background to that of Grover Cleveland.

-- Elected Sheriff of Erie Co., NY, in 1870 for a 4-year term. Goes back into private law practice at the end of the term.

-- 1881, elected as mayor of Buffalo

-- 1882, elected as governor of New York

-- 1884, elected to the presidency

Democrats should just shut up about Palin's "Grover Cleveland" problem (not that other problem --"Ma, ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.").

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A Washington Post report begins: Any two people interested in whether Amanda Beard is dating fellow Olympian Michael Phelps, and who clicked on the Boston Herald tidbit that raced around the Web last week, got the same piece of gossip. ...

What was different was the political ads that appeared -- or didn't -- beside the story.

Readers who had visited Barack Obama's Web site received as many as three Obama ads alongside the gossip. "Help Elect Barack Obama President of the United States" and "Visit the Barack Obama Website," the ads said.

Readers who hadn't visited his site didn't see a single Obama pitch.

How did the campaign know which readers to send ads to? Although both the Obama and John McCain campaigns are reluctant to discuss details, the ability to identify sympathetic voters based on their Internet habits, and then to target them with ads as they move across the Web, is one of the defining aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign. -- Candidates' Web Sites Get to Know the Voters - washingtonpost.com

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The Trail reports: Last night, in a cell phone text message that was quickly followed by an e-mail linking back to a new page on his Web site -- my.barackobama.com/vp -- aides to Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) campaign wrote: "Barack will announce his VP candidate choice through txt message between now & the Conv. Tell everyone to text VP to 62262 to be the first to know! Please forward." ...

It also gives the Obama campaign one more way to differentiate itself technologically from its Republican opponent; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn't have a text messaging program.

A number of candidates have experimented with texting this campaign cycle, and Obama has by far been the most prolific texter. Though Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), former governor Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) and Edwards all had text messaging programs, Obama's campaign has used the technology most consistently. Since announcing its program last summer, Obama has sent at least 25 texts to supporters. -- Obama Plans Novel VP Announcement TXT | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

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Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week.

The letter is an opening shot across the bow from an unusual new outside political group on the left that is poised to engage in hardball tactics to prevent similar groups on the right from getting off the ground this fall.

Led by Tom Matzzie, a liberal political operative who has been involved with some prominent left-wing efforts in recent years, the newly formed nonprofit group, Accountable America, is planning to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions. ...

The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives. -- Group Plans Campaign Against G.O.P. Donors

Note: If anyone gets one of these letters, please send it to me. I will redact it to remove personal information before publishing. The letter is available here. By the way, the website is actually www.accountableamerica.COM (not .org).

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The Sam Wang writes on the Princeon Election Consortium: For those of you who followed my analysis in 2004, welcome back. Just as I did then, I’ll be providing meta-analysis of polling in the 2008 Presidential race. My central goal is to reduce hundreds of state-level polls to simple statistics that will show you the state of play. The methods will be transparent, and with the help of Andrew Ferguson, automated and more visually accessible. -- We’re back!

Hat-tip to Kevin Drum for the link.

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The New York Times reports: Warren Ballentine, one of black talk radio’s new stars, was on a tear against Senator John McCain as he broadcast from the Greenbriar Mall here last week, blithely dismissing Mr. McCain’s kind words about Senator Barack Obama at the recent N.A.A.C.P. national convention. ...

Rush Limbaugh, meet your black liberal counterprogramming. Mr. Ballentine is one of the many African-American radio hosts and commentators who are aggressively advocating for Mr. Obama’s election on black-oriented radio stations daily.

Since Mr. Limbaugh first flexed his tonsils two decades ago, Democrats have publicly worried about their lack of an answer to him and his imitators, who have proven so adept at motivating conservative Republicans to go to the polls, especially for President Bush.

Now it is Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has a harmonious chorus of broadcast supporters addressing a vital part of his coalition, feeding and reflecting the excitement blacks have for his candidacy in general. Mr. Obama is getting support from white liberal talk radio hosts as well, but the backing he is getting from black radio hosts could be especially helpful to his campaign’s efforts to increase black turnout and raise historically low voter registration enough to change the math of presidential elections in battlegrounds and traditionally Republican states like this one. -- Black Radio on Obama Is Left’s Answer to Limbaugh

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The Hill reports: National Democrats are trying their luck with a series of candidate ads that inhabit a gray area of the law, and observers say the approach could be a game-changer in the continuing battle over campaign finance reform.

In recent weeks the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has begun its 2008 ad campaign by funding issue ads that feature their candidates in Mississippi and Oregon and are coordinated with their campaigns.

However, the ads don’t expressly ask viewers to vote for those candidates, and Democrats maintain that this loophole will allow them to spend lots more money on the television spots.

Campaign finance regulations restrict the amount of money the DSCC can spend on coordinated efforts with a candidate’s campaign. But because the ads don’t ask viewers to vote for the candidates, Democrats contend that law doesn’t apply.

Republicans argue the ads are illegal — or at the very least, unethical — and have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The ads are also being judged in the court of public opinion, and the GOP has gained some traction with a media blitz. -- TheHill.com - DSCC pushes the envelope with issue ads featuring candidates

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Politico reports: Don’t mess with their elephant.

Or at least, don’t infringe on what the Republican National Committee refers to as the Official Elephant Logo (Federal Trademark Registration 1908397). The phrase appears in a letter demanding that a Web-based t-shirt company “cease and desist” from putting a version of the iconic Republican symbol on shirts and other merchandise.

The demands from the RNC to the California-based CafePress.com put the committee at the intersection of political speech and trademark law, legal experts said. The company is refusing to comply with the letter, despite a second letter from the committee referring to “further action” and possible damages.

“If you want to say ‘GOP’ and design an elephant that’s similar, want to design an elephant that’s not precisely the same as ours, that’s fine,” RNC chief counsel Sean Cairncross told Politico. “Our elephant is specific. It’s stylized, it’s blue and red, it has three stars across its back that are tilted. They’re using that precise elephant.”

The lawyer for CafePress, Paul Alan Levy, called the RNC demand an “abuse of trademark law to suppress discussion of topics of substantial public interest.” -- RNC fights use of elephant logo - Ben Smith - Politico.com

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Salon reports: About every week or so, you get an e-mail from Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, or top deputy Steve Hildebrand, or maybe Obama himself. They re breezy and informal, addressing you by first NAME at the outset before they ask you to donate money at the end . But that s just the beginning.

You know, of course, that Obama has your e-mail address. You may not have realized that he probably also has your phone number and knows where you re registered to vote -- including whether that s a house or an apartment building, and whether you rent or own. He s got a decent estimate of your household income and whether you OPENed a credit card recently. He knows how many kids you re likely to have and what you do for a living. He knows what magazines and catalogs you get and whether you re more apt to get your news from cable TV, the local newspaper or online. And he knows what time of day you tend to get around to plowing through your in box and responding to messages.

The 5 million people on Obama s e-mail list are just the start of what political strategists say is one of the most sophisticated voter databases ever built. Using a combination of the information that supporters are volunteering, data the campaign is digging up on its own and powerful market research tools first developed for corporations, Obama s staff has combined new online organizing with old-school methods of voter outreach to assemble a central database for hitting people with messages tailored as closely as possible to what they re likely to want to hear. It s an ambitious melding of corporate marketing and grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign sees as a key to winning this fall. -- Barack Obama s super marketing machine | Salon News

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The New York Times reports: The video blasted across the Internet, drawing political blood from Senator John McCain within a matter of days.

Produced here in a cluttered former motel behind the Sony Pictures lot, it juxtaposed harsh statements about Islam made by the Rev. Rod Parsley with statements from Mr. McCain praising Mr. Parsley, a conservative evangelical leader. The montage won notice on network newscasts this spring and ultimately helped lead Mr. McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, to reject Mr. Parsley’s earlier endorsement.

In previous elections, an attack like that would have come from party operatives, campaign researchers or the professional political hit men who orbit around them.

But in the 2008 race, the first in which campaigns are feeling the full force of the changes wrought by the Web, the most attention-grabbing attacks are increasingly coming from people outside the political world. In some cases they are amateurs operating with nothing but passion, a computer and a YouTube account, in other cases sophisticated media types with more elaborate resources but no campaign experience. -- Political Freelancers Use Web to Join the Attack - NYTimes.com

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Slate reports on Spot Runner -- a low-cost generic advertising service for small businesses and now ... political candidates.

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CBN News reports: The Brody File first reported that the Obama campaign will be launching The Joshua Generation Project aimed at young Evangelicals and faith voters. Well, it turns out there may be a legal issue with the NAME. Read below from Roll Call.

Sen. Barack Obama is about to launch his latest outreach to religious voters, but the NAME of the group could land him in legal trouble.

First reported on Friday by Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, Obama s Joshua Generation is designed to help the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee appeal to young evangelicals.

But "Generation Joshua," a division of the Home School Legal Defense Association, has been established since 2003 and is pursuing legal action against the Obama campaign.

"This is an improper invasion of our trademark and we ve retained legal counsel to notify the Obama campaign to stop this," HSLDA's co-founder, chairman, and general counsel, Michael Farris, told Roll Call on Monday morning. The conservative group plans to notify the Obama campaign later today. -- Obama Campaign may be Sued for Joshua Generation Project - The Brody File: David Brody Blog - CBN News

Note: Google the two words Joshua Generation and see how many hits you get. It's like calling your church Mt. Shiloh Baptist Church. Thousands of them.

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I was reading an article in the Kansas City Star, Mapping a long road to the White House, and noticed a reference to FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right. I suggest you take a look at it.

I have not fully digested their methodology, but it appears they are trying to be open in disclosing the methodology.

Note their list of states in the left column. The states are in groups of 4-6. The names are pretty standard -- New England, Pacific, Rust Belt, etc. But one stands out: "Acela." Before you look at FiveThirtyEight.com, guess the 5 states in Acela.

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The Washington Post's Sleuth blog reports: The president of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation is disturbed by an offensive t-shirt the group received in the mail Wednesday, the day after Barack Obama claimed his party s presidential nomination. The shirt has a cartoon image of Curious George, the beloved children s character, with a paper bag over his head holding a sign that says A Truth We Can Believe in 08!!! written underneath.

CBCF President Elsie Scott says she believes the timing of the package was no coincidence. We received it as a reaction to Obama winning the nomination, she tells the Sleuth. ...

Scott said she found the t-shirt "offensive" and when she looked more closely at the back of it, she became "very disturbed" and reported the contents of the package to the hate crimes unit of the D.C. Metropolitan Police.

The back of the shirt lists several African American organizations, ranging from the CBCF and the NAACP to the Black Surfers Association, the Black Coaches Association and Obama's former church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. It prints the United Nations' definition of "racial discrimination" and states, underneath the listing of all the black organizations, "Who is really causing the Racial Division." -- Black Group Offended by Delivery of T-Shirt - The Sleuth

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The Birmingham News reports: Former Alabama Republican Party Executive Director Tim Baer, a plainspoken political operative who helped the GOP take over the state s appellate courts, died over the weekend.

Mr. Baer, who was born near Buffalo, N.Y., and reared in Pompano Beach, Fla., had called Birmingham home since 1985. He was 57.

While he was the state GOP s executive director for a time - first getting the job in 1997 - Mr. Baer also worked as director of field operations for the Business Council of Alabama, where his job included raising money for the group s political action committee, Progress PAC. He also was an aide to former Probate Judge Mark Gaines, where one of his jobs was to oversee Jefferson County elections. -- Former Alabama Republican Party Executive Director Tim Baer dies at the age of 57- al.com

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The New York Times reports: Jordan M. Wright, who at 10 was thrilled to learn that politicians hand out self-promotional baubles, then collected more than a million bumper stickers and other campaign artifacts — from the time of George Washington to that of George W. Bush — died on May 11 at his home in Atlantic Beach, N.Y. He was 50. ...

Mr. Wright, a lawyer, businessman and publisher, died just as his political treasure chest (if “Clean Up With Ike” bars of soap can be called treasure) was getting wider notice. This year, he published a book with pictures and commentary on his vast collection, and next month, the Museum of the City of New York will exhibit some of it. In recent months, interviews with Mr. Wright have appeared in newspapers around the country, as he and a tiny fraction of his collection have toured. ...

Few could forget what the museum calls his “one of a kind” porcelain and cloth doll depicting, when held upright, President William McKinley. Turned upside down, an African-American baby can be seen. The doll was meant to be a reminder of the rumor that Mr. McKinley had fathered a black child out of wedlock.

Another proof that old-time politics were at least as dirty as today’s version, and evidently stranger, was the brochure produced by President Warren Harding’s father-in-law. His disenchantment with his daughter’s groom can be gleaned from the title: “The Serious Lesson in President Harding’s Case of Gonorrhea.” -- Jordan Wright, 50, Political Archivist, Dies

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The New York Times reports: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the nation approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.

“The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.”

Admiral Mullen’s essay appears in the coming issue of Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal that is distributed widely among the officer corps.

The essay is the first Admiral Mullen has written for the journal as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and veteran officers said they could not remember when a similar “all-hands” letter had been issued to remind military personnel to remain outside, if not above, contentious political debate. -- Military Chief Warns Troops About Politics - NYTimes.com

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The New York Times reports: After expelling four advisers in the last week over concerns about their outside entanglements, Senator John McCain said Friday that his presidential campaign was beginning a new “vetting process” intended to end the embarrassments over staff ties to private interests, foreign governments or independent political groups.

A campaign spokeswoman said it was too soon to say how many campaign officials might be removed under the new rules, which were distributed to campaign staff members Thursday night with a questionnaire to ferret out potential conflicts. ...

The midcampaign staff review underscores the difficulties Mr. McCain is having in trying to build his Republican presidential campaign around his crusades for tighter ethics rules and pledges to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest. It is hard for any campaign to find experienced operatives who do not also sell their political connections, expertise or influence to private interests. And Mr. McCain’s emphasis on strict ethics has drawn special attention to the number of potential conflicts within his own staff.

On Friday, the campaign severed its ties to Craig Shirley, a veteran public relations consultant who had helped handle outreach to conservatives. The campaign said it would no longer employ Mr. Shirley because he was also working for StopHerNow.com, an independent political group initially dedicated to attacking Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that is now refocusing on Senator Barack Obama (and changing its name). -- In Effort to Avoid Conflicts, McCain Issues New Rules for Staff - New York Times

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New Hampshire Public Radio reports: The phone jamming scandal from New Hampshire s 2002 election is now a contentious issue on Capitol Hill.

Democrats are investigating what they say was White House involvement in the incident while Republicans say Democrats are just fishing for headlines.

NHPR Correspondent Matt Laslo reports from Washington. -- Phone Jamming Scandal Gets Hearing in US House | New Hampshire Public Radio

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The New York Times reports: In the threadbare border towns of South Texas, one of the country’s poorest regions, enterprising locals like Candelaria Espinoza have long been paid to round up votes for candidates on Election Day. There is even a name for these electoral soldiers of fortune: politiqueras. ...

The payments, known in the political vernacular as “street money,” are a legal but controversial tool that Mrs. Clinton employed at a time when she was desperately seeking a victory after losing 10 consecutive contests to Mr. Obama.

As a practical matter, the payments are now little more than a footnote to a hotly contested race that seems closer to a conclusion after Mrs. Clinton’s poor showing in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana last Tuesday. But they underscore how her strategists, caught unprepared for a drawn-out battle, turned to an old-style method of retail politicking to ensure much-needed victories in the suddenly critical Texas and Ohio primaries.

Not equipped with the volunteer-driven grass-roots movement that has propelled Mr. Obama’s get-out-the-vote efforts, the Clinton campaign hired more than three times as many local operatives as he to fill that role in those two states. While mostly forgoing the use of street money in Ohio and other places, the Obama campaign paid about 150 people in Texas, most of them college students, for campaign work. The payments were widely dispersed, with only a handful in South Texas and fewer than 20 in Houston. -- Legal but Controversial, It Helped Get Out the Vote

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The Wall Street Journal reports: A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.

Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.

The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate. ...

The section of the tax code barring nonprofits from intervening in political campaigns has long frustrated clergy. Many ministers consider the provision an inappropriate government intrusion, blocking the duty of clergy to advise congregants.

Alliance fund staff hopes 40 or 50 houses of worship will take part in the action, including clerics from liberal-leaning congregations. About 80 ministers have expressed interest, including one Catholic priest, says Erik Stanley, the Alliance's senior legal counsel. -- Pastors May Defy IRS Gag Rule - WSJ.com

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Carlton Larson, writing on Prawfsblawg, suggests "Suppose Obama announced that he would name Hillary Clinton to the first Supreme Court vacancy of his term." -- PrawfsBlawg: Hillary Clinton for the Supreme Court?

There is a small problem with that idea. 18 USC § 599 provides:

Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

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The DNC released a memo this afternoon showing

The memo contains state-by-state tables and more supporting data.

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Tom Edsall writes on the Huffington Post: Hillary Clinton s campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp and by no means inevitable shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party s 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate. -- Clinton Camp Considering Nuclear Option To Overtake Delegate Lead - Politics on The Huffington Post

Comment: The only reason to float this scenario now is to send a Nixonian message to Obama's would-be supporters that HRC is willing to destroy the Party in order to get her way. By projecting this power now, she hopes to sway waverers away from Obama.

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The Washington Post reports: Women's Voices, Women Vote is one of those little advocacy organizations with a lot of big names attached: Former White House chief of staff John Podesta is a board member, Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams has consulted, and founder Page Gardner worked for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign, to name a few.

But for all the paid and unpaid talent associated with the group, which focuses on registering unmarried women to vote, it's landed in legal hot water in North Carolina for robo-calling voters after the primary registration date and for not identifying the group in the call.

Voters and watchdog groups complained about the calls, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered them to stop on Wednesday. Some saw a turnout-suppression conspiracy because the group's allies include so many Clinton supporters, especially Podesta and Williams.

On Friday, Barack Obama's campaign weighed in by circulating the transcript of a National Public Radio report on the calls. It noted that the North Carolina calls seemed to heavily skew to African Americans, including many women who had already registered, causing them to question whether they were eligible to vote in the primary on Tuesday.

In a statement released on its Web site, the group explains that the calls were part of a general-election outreach effort in 24 states and coincided with mailings that conveyed a similar "hurry up and register" message. But in other states as well, the mailings and calls were placed after primary registration deadlines had passed, sowing confusion and leading to other legal complaints against the group. -- Women's Voices, Women Vote: Did the Outreach Overreach? - washingtonpost.com

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The New York Times reports: Even some states without open primaries seem to have experienced crossover voting. In the Pennsylvania vote on April 22, voter surveys indicated that about 5 percent of those voting in the Democratic primary were Republicans who switched their party registration; they split their vote almost evenly between the two candidates.

Here in Indiana, both Democratic candidates are sending surrogates to campaign in traditionally Republican areas they might have ignored in years past, including in Hamilton County, Indiana’s fastest-growing and most affluent county.

“We’re getting a lot of inquiries from Republicans asking how do you do it, how do you cross over,” Dan Parker, the Democratic Party state chairman, said in an interview here. “It’s been our No. 1 request for the past two months.”

Clouding the picture, however, is a campaign by Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host, urging his listeners to cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton “if they can stomach it,” in order to prolong the Democratic race and weaken the eventual winner. -- Republicans Crossing Over to Vote in Democratic Contests - New York Times

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The Birmingham News reports: Homewood Mayor Barry McCulley apologized Monday for granting the McCain presidential campaign a reduced rental rate at Rosewood Hall for an April 21 fundraiser.

The campaign was charged $250 to rent two rooms, which have a posted rate of $1,200.

I did exceed my authority by changing the rental rate of Rosewood Hall prior to the John McCain event, McCulley said in a three-page statement. At that time, I believed that I had been given that authority. ...

McCulley reiterated that he wasn't attempting to give the McCain campaign a special deal: "My motives were simply to implement what had already been discussed, in order to create additional revenue for the city where there had been none due to rates for Monday and Tuesday nights being too high."

McCulley said he asked the McCain campaign to pay the balance of the rent.

"Short of that, I will find a way to pay the difference myself," he said. -- Homewood Mayor McCulley apologizes for reduced rental rate to McCain event- al.com

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The New York Times reports: Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.

But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.

The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.

Because that exemption remains, Mr. McCain’s campaign was able to use his wife’s corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign’s actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit. -- McCain Frequently Used Wife’s Jet for Little Cost

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The Birmingham News reports: A brewing dispute over a $250 rental rate charged to Republican presidential candidate John McCain has pitted Homewood s mayor and the City Council on opposing sides.

Mayor Barry McCulley authorized renting two rooms in Homewood s Rosewood Hall to the McCain campaign for a Monday night fundraiser at a rate that was nearly 80 percent below the posted booking price of $1,200. McCulley said Friday the $250 rate was not a discount, but a new rate he decided to set for any events taking place on Monday nights, when the hall is rarely booked.

I just simply went ahead and established that for Monday night, McCulley said. If the Democrats want to bring Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in here and have it Monday night, they are going to get exactly the same deal that McCain got.

But council members and City Attorney Michael Kendrick said McCulley exceeded his authority. -- Homewood mayor says he has authority to set rental rates; council members disagree- al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: Republican presidential candidate John McCain got a deal when his campaign rented gathering space from the city of Homewood for a private fundraiser earlier this week.

His campaign was given a discount of about 80 percent off the standard booking rate for Rosewood Hall. In September, Jefferson County Democrats rented the same facility and were charged the full rate.

The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee.

Homewood Mayor Barry McCulley said the rental rate was discounted because the event was on Monday, a slow day for business. City Council members say they always vote on such discounts but didn't get a say in this deal. They're upset, as are local Democrats. -- McCain campaign gets almost 80% off on Homewood gathering space, plus free labor from Homewood Jail inmates - al.com

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Scotland on Sunday reports: DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president.
Falling poll numbers and a string of high-profile blunders have convinced party elders that she must now bow out of the primary race.

Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats.

"They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence."

An appeal by both men for Democrats to unite behind Clinton's rival, Barack Obama, would have a powerful effect, and insiders say it is a question of when, rather than if, they act. --
It s Obama, stupid: Carter and Gore to end Clinton bid - Scotland on Sunday

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The New York Times reports: The conservative group Freedom’s Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall. ...

Independent groups not constrained by the limits placed on campaign contributions to candidates and parties have increasingly become major players in races for federal offices. Those known as 527s, named for the section in the tax code they fall under, raised more than $400 million in the 2004 election cycle alone, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Such efforts could be especially beneficial for Mr. McCain, who has badly trailed his Democratic counterparts in fund-raising. ...

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine.

Mr. Adelson has insisted on parceling out his money project by project, as opposed to setting an overall budget, limiting the group’s ability to plan and be nimble, the Republican operatives said. Mr. Adelson, who has a reputation for being combative, has rejected almost all of the staff’s proposals that have been brought to him, leaving the organization moribund for long stretches, the operatives said. -- Great Expectations for a Conservative Group Seem All but Dashed

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The New York Times reports: [Harold Ickes] is president of Catalist, a for-profit databank that has sold its voter files to the Obama and the Clinton presidential campaigns for their get-out-the-vote efforts. With his equity stake in the firm, Mr. Ickes stands to benefit financially no matter which candidate becomes the Democratic nominee.

In creating Catalist, Mr. Ickes, who was deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House, has formed a rare entity on the political scene, a for-profit limited-liability corporation that allows wealthy Democratic donors to help progressive organizations and candidates by investing in the company. And if Catalist, which has data on 230 million Americans, is successful as a business, these donors-turned-investors stand to reap financial returns from using their money to help elect Democrats.

But some campaign finance watchdogs say they wonder whether Catalist was established not so much to make money but to find a creative way to allow big-money liberal donors to influence the election without disclosing the degree of their involvement or being subjected to other rules that would govern spending by an explicitly political organization.

Catalist has raised over $11 million in venture capital, including more than $1 million from the billionaire financier George Soros, according to his aides. It also counts on such large unions as the Service Employees International Union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., to buy its products and create revenues. And it plans to be the go-to source for voter data for a broad swath of groups often aligned with Democrats — like the Sierra Club, Emily’s List and Clean Water Action — as they embark on ambitious get-out-the vote efforts this fall. -- Clinton Aide’s Databank Venture Breaks Ground in Politicking

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The Charleston Gazette reports: Anonymous advertising in West Virginia political campaigns would open the door for a repeat of the 2004 Supreme Court race, where voters did not learn until later who was spending millions of dollars on behalf of candidates, several lawyers told a federal judge Wednesday.

But the Center for Individual Freedom argued that West Virginia s election laws - which require the group to disclose its donors if it buys political advertising - violate its free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The Virginia-based organization asked U.S. District Judge David A. Faber to grant it an injunction allowing it to advertise in the upcoming state Supreme Court election without disclosing its spending or its donors. The state s primary election is May 13.

Last month, the center filed a lawsuit against the state s top election official, Secretary of State Betty Ireland. Mercer County Prosecuting Attorney Timothy Boggess was also NAMEd in the suit as a representative of all the state s prosecutors.

Three of the four Democratic candidates for state Supreme Court have joined in fighting the injunction, as have the West Virginia AFL-CIO, the state Education Association, the Council of Churches and other groups. -- Lawyers argue over rules for political ads

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The Union Leader reports: The U.S. Department of Justice is appealing the acquittal last month of former national Republican Party official James Tobin on telephone harassment charges stemming from the illegal GOP phone-jamming operation of Election Day, 2002.

U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe cleared Tobin, of Bangor, Maine, on Feb. 21, saying that he had been constrained by a 2007 appeals court ruling to conclude Tobin was entitled to acquittal. McAuliffe predicted then that the legal question at issue would eventually be addressed by the appellate court.

Federal prosecutors filed a notice of appeal this week.

The appeals court a year ago overturned Tobin s 2005 conviction on two felony telephone harassment charges stemming from the phone-jamming scheme and sent the case back to McAuliffe s trial court for review of whether Tobin s role had fit the crime with which he had been charged and convicted. Tobin was not required to serve any of his 10-month prison sentence. -- UnionLeader.com - New Hampshire news - Appeals court called in Tobin acquittal - Saturday, Mar. 15, 2008

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The Los Angeles Times reports: For the second time in six months, Buena Park pastor Wiley S. Drake has called on his followers to pray for the demise of leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Last week, Drake learned that the IRS had launched an investigation into his endorsement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee s presidential bid, an inquiry that Americans United had urged.

The endorsement was written on church letterhead and announced during a church- affiliated Internet radio show. As tax-exempt organizations, churches are barred from campaigning for candidates. IRS officials declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy regulations.

In an e-mail Thursday, Drake urged action against Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union.

As he had in August, Drake quoted Psalm 109, which speaks of wicked and deceitful people and asks God to let such a person s days be few and let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. -- Pastor again asks prayers for demise of group s leaders - Los Angeles Times

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The New York Times reports: Senator Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday’s primaries leading Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by more than 100 delegates, a small but significant advantage that Democrats said would be difficult for Mrs. Clinton to make up in the remaining contests in the presidential nomination battle. ...

With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

Mrs. Clinton won more votes than Mr. Obama in both states, though both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively there.

Mr. Obama’s aides reiterated their opposition to allowing Mrs. Clinton to claim a proportional share of the delegates from the voting in those states. The prospect of a fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations has already exposed deep divisions within the party. -- Obama’s Lead in Delegates Shifts Focus of Campaign

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If you want to see the presidential primary results in colorful maps, go to Cogitamus: 2008 Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday Primary And Caucus Results Maps & Haiku

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Jack Balkin writes on Balkinization: Yale economics professor Ray Fair has been predicting Presidential elections with only a handful of variables since the 1970's. He argues that economic news (in particular, a combination of inflation and growth) is the primary determinant of electoral success in Presidential elections. His simple formula, updated to the present, suggests that the Republicans are in for trouble. The model currently predicts a 52-48 victory for the Democrats, and with even greater margins if the economy continues to struggle. -- Balkinization

Comment: I am always fascinated by these predictions because they seem to say that, no matter how many bumper stickers, yard signs, and telephone banks we have, a unseen hand writes the election results for us.

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Rick Klau writes on his eponymous blog: It’s looking increasingly likely that the race for a nominee in the Democratic party will take some time to settle out… and the “super delegates” may actually have a hand in deciding who the Democratic nominee is.

If you don’t know what a “super delegate” is, don’t worry – a lot of people don’t. Each state has a number of “pledged” delegates – these are the delegates chosen during the primary or caucus. (I’m simplifying, but that’s more or less the case.) In the Democratic party, those delegates are awarded on a proportional basis – if a candidate gets 50% of the vote, they’ll get 50% of that state’s delegates (Again, there’s a bit more to it, but for purposes of this discussion, that’ll do.)

In addition to the 3200 pledged delegates, there are another 800 delegates who are “unpledged”. Made up of elected officials (Senators, Representatives, former presidents) and party officials (state chairs and the like), these so-called “super delegates” get a vote at the convention, and make up 20% of the vote. In past years, these super delegates basically get a ticket to the convention to participate in the formality of “choosing” a nominee… but the nominee became a de facto nominee by winning so many primaries and caucuses that noone else had any mathematical possibility of getting enough delegates to win the nomination. ...

In an attempt to shed some light on this process, I built a site over the weekend – SuperDelegates.org. Starting with a terrific list provided by the guys who maintain DemConWatch, I started filling in a little info about the super delegates and linking to their endorsement (if given). After finding a great extension to MediaWiki (KMLExport, in case you’re interested), I was also able to add in geo coordinates (latitude and longitude) to the delegate pages, so that you can see the delegates in a Google Earth layer. -- SuperDelegates.org - Learn about the DNC Super Delegates

Note: Democratic Party rules require delegates to be selected in each Congressional District. So a candidate getting 60% of the vote in a CD will receive about 60% of the delegates for that CD. The number of delegates per CD in Alabama ranges from 4 to 7, based on the vote for President in 2004 and Governor in 2006.

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AP reports: Money helped winnow the presidential field. It hasn't determined who each party's nominee will be.

Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have proven to be mega-fundraisers, operating at near parity in their own stratosphere. Each raised $100 million last year and spent at least $80 million. On Wednesday, they each spent $1.3 million in one day for television ads in Super Tuesday states, setting the trend for the days ahead.

Whoever loses has not yet been seriously outspent.

Among Republicans, money has been less of a factor. John McCain was forced to live off the land for six months only to rise to the front of the pack. Low-budget Mike Huckabee is looking for a break, and Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire who spent $35 million of his own cash, is gasping for oxygen after two straight losses.

Rudy Giuliani, who garnered the most contributions among Republican candidates, bowed out this week after his Florida-centric strategy collapsed. And dark horse Ron Paul remains in single digits in the polls despite raising more than any of his Republican rivals in the last three months of 2007.

Money matters, but it doesn't decide. -- Analysis: Political Money Not the Be - All - New York Times

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The Cullman Times reports: Democrats appear to be headed for a historic win by James Fields in the Alabama House District 12 special election With 20 of 38 precincts reporting, Fields leads his Republican opponent, Wayne Willingham, with 1,929 votes to 1,386. If Fields wins, he will be the first African-American elected to represent Cullman County at the state level. -- CullmanTimes.com, Cullman, Alabama - Homepage

Doc's Political Parlor quotes a Republican, "Fields won by a significant margin."

According to the official data, H.D. 12 was 1.60% black in 2000. Yes, less than 2%.

That sound you hear is pigs flying.

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The New York Times reports: The conventional political wisdom in delegate-rich California is that the roughly three million registered voters without a party affiliation are ripe for the picking by the Democratic candidates for president.

Democrats began allowing independents to participate in their party’s presidential primary in 2004, and campaigns now see them — the fastest-growing group of registrants in California — as potentially pushing a candidate over the top in the primary on Feb. 5. ...

(Republicans only allow their own party members to vote; the state’s American Independent Party also allows decline-to-state voters to cast ballots in its primary, but the party’s presence is very small.) ...

It is also true that decline-to-state voters must be quite motivated — and knowledgeable — to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary. The voters must ask for a Democratic ballot at their polling station; otherwise, they are provided with a nonpartisan ballot that has statewide measures only. -- California’s Unaffiliated Voters Are Sometimes Unreachable

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The Washington Post reports: Mitt Romney wants to round up 12 million illegal immigrants and deport them. John Edwards wants to put an end to lobbyists. All the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates rail against the ways of Washington.

The question is not whether we agree with these views: Politicians stake out such positions precisely because they strike a chord with many voters. The question is why we like our bromides so simple -- especially when the same promises have been offered to us time and again in previous elections.

In an unusual study analyzing State of the Union addresses like the one President Bush will give tonight, psychologists found a curious pattern in the speeches delivered by 41 U.S. presidents. The pattern explains a lot about why politicians such as Romney and Edwards talk to voters the way they do.

The study found that in the first three years after a new president takes office, his speeches displayed higher levels of complexity compared with addresses in the fourth year in office. In the first three speeches, presidents were more likely to acknowledge other points of view, potential pitfalls and unintended consequences. In the fourth year, however -- as they were about to run for reelection -- the complexity of their speeches plunged. -- Shankar Vedantam - The Science of Presidential Complexity - washingtonpost.com

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The New York Times reports: The presidential campaign is entering a new phase as Democratic and Republican candidates move beyond state-by-state competition and into a potentially protracted scramble for delegates Congressional district by Congressional district. ...

It is the first time in over 20 years in which the campaign has turned into a possibly lengthy hunt for delegates, rather than an effort to roll up a string of big-state victories.

This development reflects the competitive races in both parties, with neither a Republican nor a Democrat yet able to claim front-runner status. It has forced the campaigns to master complex delegate-allocation rules as they make a series of critical decisions about how best to allocate campaign resources to produce the greatest return of delegates.

Many of these decisions involve as little as a single delegate. ...

For Republicans, this means, for example, turning to approximately 10 heavily Democratic Congressional districts in California where there are relatively few registered Republicans, making it easier, and less expensive, to win a district and its three delegates. Both Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mr. Romney are heading there on Wednesday.

For Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Mr. Obama, it means investing resources — mailings, telephone banks and candidate visits — in Congressional districts where there are an odd number of delegates at stake, creating an opportunity to pick up an extra delegate.

Under Democratic rules, two candidates who do well in a Congressional district are likely to end up evenly dividing the delegates; where there is an odd number of delegates, the extra one goes to the candidate who wins more votes. -- Races Entering Complex Phase Over Delegates - New York Times

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AP reports: The heated racial politics in the Feb. 5 Democratic primary in Georgia just got turned up a notch.

Barack Obama's campaign has asked Georgia's attorney general to investigate anonymous "robocalls" made to Atlanta-area residents taking aim at Rep. John Lewis, who worked closely with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement.

Lewis is supporting Obama's chief rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The calls urge listeners to call Lewis and tell the congressman, who represents King's hometown, to support a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to a transcript.

Obama's camp wasted no time denying responsibility for the automated calls. In an e-mail to supporters Tuesday, Obama's Georgia director, Eureka Gilkey, said they had received "disturbing reports" about the calls from metro-Atlanta area residents. -- Obama camp asks Georgia AG to investigate calls attacking Lewis

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AP reports: A Nevada judge said Monday that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must be included in Tuesday's candidates' debate in Nevada. ...

The judge sided with a lawyer for the Ohio congressman, who says debate host MSNBC at first invited Kucinich to take part and then told him last week he couldn't.

A lawyer for the network said MSNBC decided to go with the top three candidates after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. -- Talking Points Memo | TPM News Headlines

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Allen Raymond, author of "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative," writes on TPM Cafe: As a Republican campaign operative at the Republican National Committee it was drilled into me that election law attorneys serve the purpose identifying the bright line of the law so it could be taunted but not crossed. Anybody who has a problem with that or doesn’t get it doesn’t understand America. America is about self interest, within the rule of law. That’s where I erred. -- Morality vs. Politics and My Job as a GOP Operative

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Find Your Candidate: VoteMatch - TalkLeft: The Politics Of Crime
Jeralyn writes on TalkLeft: Courtesy of the Dutch, you can answer a quick 25 questions and find the top Democrat (or Republican) that most closely matches your positions on issues -- you can even rank the issues in terms of importance to you before they calculate the final results.

Comment: Like Jeralyn, I came out with Edwards, Clinton, Obama, and like several commenters, I was amazed that Clinton was higher on my list than Obama.

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The New York Times reports: Spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, independent political groups are using their financial muscle and organizational clout as never before to influence the presidential race, pumping money and troops into early nominating states on behalf of their favored candidates.

Iowans have been bombarded over the last few days with radio spots supporting John Edwards that were paid for by a group affiliated with locals of the Service Employees International Union, which just kicked in $800,000 — on top of $760,000 already spent.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, rolled across Iowa on Monday in a customized black-and-gold bus emblazoned with his picture and the logo of the International Association of Firefighters, which has spent several hundred thousand dollars supporting him. And at campaign events in Iowa, backers in A.F.S.C.M.E. union shirts turned out Monday to show their support for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. Those appearances come in addition to the union’s $770,000 advertising campaign promoting her candidacy.

The groups are prohibited from coordinating their efforts with the campaigns. But the candidates, while often distancing themselves from these efforts, certainly benefit from their activities. Iowa airwaves have been filled with commercials from these groups as they take advantage of the June ruling that lifted a ban on broadcast messages from independent groups within 30 days of a primary or caucus.

Independent groups also act as a vehicle for negative advertising that campaigns are reluctant to engage in. The Club for Growth, for instance, has spent $700,000 so far, largely on broadcast spots here and in other early voting states that criticize Mike Huckabee’s record on taxes while he was Arkansas governor, an effort that has received several hundred thousands of dollars from an Arkansas political rival of Mr. Huckabee, a Republican. -- Outside Groups Spend Heavily and Visibly to Sway ’08 Races

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The Washington Post reports: In Sen. Barack Obama's Iowa headquarters, young staff members sit at computers, analyzing online voter data and targeting potential backers. They zip one e-mail to an undecided voter and zap a different message to a firm supporter. ...

If the Internet is like a big grocery store, Obama's aides made sure he appeared on every aisle. As some campaign workers built mailing lists and telephone trees according to political, professional and personal interests, others created the first groups and profiles on sites as varied as Eons, the MySpace for baby boomers, and LinkedIn, a site mostly for white-collar professionals.

They also used BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, AsianAve.com and GLEE.com -- the MySpace and Facebook for, respectively, the African American, Latino, Asian and gay online communities. They have posted more than 350 videos on his YouTube channel, twice as many as Clinton, and his videos have been viewed nearly twice as often as hers. Obama has more MySpace friends than any other Democratic candidate, and he lists more Facebook supporters than all other Democrats combined.

Looking ahead to caucus day, the campaign is setting up a "catch-all queue," in which caucus-goers could get an answer within minutes after texting a question such as "Where's my precinct in Des Moines?" -- Obama Tries New Tactics To Get Out Vote in Iowa - washingtonpost.com

Note: Another Post story explains that because of caucus rules, even one vote may make a difference as to who wins a delegate in a particular caucus.

But I wonder which numbers the networks will report -- the raw numbers or the number of delegates won? Or both?

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An AP story begins: Dig beneath the surface of the raucous Republican presidential race and you will find even deeper turmoil: Four in 10 GOP voters have switched candidates in the past month alone, and nearly two-thirds say they may change their minds again.

Well, folks, that's all about the change. Every Monday morning, I read the little article on page 2 of the Birmingham News about the "winners" of the weekend box office grosses for movies. Sometimes I have seen one of those movies, many time not. But even if it came in on top of the charts, I am not going to see "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem." On the other hand, if I a movie I want to see is not doing well, I may never get to see it. I recently have had to go far afield to the one theater in the area showing a particular movie. It might be gone within a week or two.

The same goes for the primary field. You can read pundit after pundit telling you that if Candidate X does not do well in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, Candidate X's campaign will be toast. Before I get to vote in the Alabama primary on 5 February, the "box office" in faraway Iowa or New Hampshire may have decided that show won't open in Alabama.

As the new movie title (I have not seen the movie yet) says, "There will be blood."

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CQ Politics reports: Prerecorded calls offering negative information about every Republican presidential hopeful except former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee caused a bit of an furor in Iowa this week, and Congress just might keep stirring the pot.

The House Administration Subcommittee on Elections is considering whether political dial-a-voter messages ought to abide by the same “do not call” list limits as commercial telemarketers. Lawmakers are concerned that some groups are using the calls to deliberately mislead voters and that the abuse could depress voter turnout.

A spokesman for Zoe Lofgren , D-Calif., the subcommittee’s chairwoman, said she may try to add such a provision to a pending bill (HR 1383) seeking stricter limits on the so-called robo-calls.

During a hearing Thursday, Lofgren said a Pew Internet and American Life Project report indicated that roughly two-thirds of Americans received the prerecorded calls during the weeks preceding last year’s election. -- Congress Takes New Legislative Interest in Political ‘Robo-Calls'

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Alabama's American Association of University Women to launch Ready to Run program to elect more women to office- al.com
The Birmingham News reports: In recent years, Alabama women have run for such high-profile elective offices as governor, U.S. senator, lieutenant governor and the mayor's chairs in Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville.

More women lost than won in those races, and more men still seek and win elective office in Alabama. But an effort is under way to change all that.

The Alabama chapter of the American Association of University Women has organized an effort called Ready to Run that will kick off next year with the goal to train and encourage more women to run for office and seek other government leadership positions. ...

While women have made inroads to the once almost all-male world of elective office in Alabama, a survey late last year showed Alabama with the fourth-lowest percentage of women legislators among the 50 states. That survey, performed by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, showed only South Carolina, Kentucky and Oklahoma with lower percentages of women in their legislatures than Alabama.

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Kos himself quotes on Daily Kos from a press release: The Washington State Democratic Party today filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission regarding serious violations of election law by Congressman Dave Reichert.

On August 27, 2007, President Bush held a $1,000 a head fundraiser in Bellevue on behalf of Congressman Reichert, the proceeds of which were supposed to be placed into a special joint account that would then be divided between the Reichert campaign and the Washington State Republican Party. Instead, much of the money appears to have been deposited directly in Congressman Reichert’s campaign account, a serious violation of FEC rules. The Reichert campaign has also failed to refund at least one contribution in excess of the $4,600 campaign contribution limit for individual donors. -- WA-08: The Reichert/Bush fundraising disaster

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Casey Ann has a long impassioned post at Cotton Mouth about the conviction of Judge Wes Teel in Mississippi. I won't even attempt to summarize it. Just read it.

Adam Lynch has a long story about the same set of prosecutions in the Jackson Free Press.

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The Birmingham News reports: Birmingham lawyer John Grenier, considered by many the founding father of the modern-day Alabama Republican Party, has died.

Mr. Grenier, 77, died at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center on Tuesday.

"I think it is true to say that John was certainly among the founding fathers, if not the founding father, of the Republican Party we see in Alabama today," said former U.S. Rep. Jack Edwards of Mobile. -- John Grenier, Birmingham lawyer, state GOP pioneer, dies at 77- al.com

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From a UAB press release: Anti-spam researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) noted a disturbing new trend following Sunday's Republican Candidates Presidential debate. One of the candidates has a new spam campaign dedicated to proclaiming him victorious in the debate and extolling his virtues as the future president.

There is no reason to believe the current spam campaign is actually endorsed by Ron Paul or his official campaign engine, according to Gary Warner, UAB Director of Research in Computer Forensics, ...

The new messages have headlines such as:

Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate!
Ron Paul Eliminates the IRS!
Ron Paul Stops Iraq War!
Vote Ron Paul 2008!
Iraq Scam Exposed, Ron Paul
Government Wasteful Spending Eliminated By Ron Paul

Warner says, "We've seen many previous emails reported as spam from other campaigns or parties, but when we've investigated them, they all were sent from the legitimate parties." The important distinction between the new emails and previous emails, Warner says, is the fraudulent nature of the message. Legitimate messages tell who they are from, and provide a means of "unsubscribing" from future messages from the same source. -- "Ron Paul Spammers" Targeted by UAB Spam Team

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The New York Times reports: Oh, the Christmas season: the scent of eggnog, the sounds of sleigh bells, the good cheer — and all those slashing political attack ads, hard-hitting mailings, pre-recorded candidate phone calls and intrusive, get-out-the-vote drives?

With the first voting now scheduled to take place right after the first of the year, the presidential candidates are hurriedly making plans to cope with the challenge of conducting all-out campaigns smack in the middle of the holidays. Unlike previous elections, there will be no real buffer this time between the family gathering, bowl-game-watching (and drinking) tradition of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day and the initial presidential contests in the early voting states.

On Tuesday night, the Iowa Republican Party decided to hold its caucuses on Jan. 3. It is the earliest that the party caucuses there have been scheduled since Iowa established its general position 36 years ago as the first state to vote in the national nominating contest, and it put pressure on the Democrats in Iowa to settle on the same schedule. The previous earliest date for the Iowa caucuses was Jan. 19, in the 1976 campaign. ...

Do the candidates need to unleash their advertising campaigns earlier than they otherwise would have? Will anyone show up if the candidates schedule town hall meetings in Iowa and New Hampshire right after Christmas?

How will candidates allocate their time if only a few days separate the Iowa caucuses from the New Hampshire primary? And will voters think poorly of candidates for running negative television commercials between feel-good spots starring Santa or the local news team singing while dressed as elves? -- Newest Factor for Earlier Primaries: Grinch Effect

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Allan Lichtman writes on History News Network: The election for president is more than a year away. Neither major party has as yet chosen a nominee. Yet the results of the 2008 election are already in: the Democrats will recapture the White House next fall, whether they nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Only an unprecedented cataclysmic change in American politics during the next year could salvage Republican hopes.

This good news for Democrats and grim news for Republicans comes from the “Keys to the White House,” a historically based prediction system that I developed in 1981, in collaboration with Volodia Keilis-Borok, an authority on the mathematics of prediction models.

The Keys retrospectively accurately account for the popular vote winners of every presidential election from 1860 through 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2004. The keys model predicted George W. Bush’s reelection in April 2003. -- Allan Lichtman: The 13 Keys to the White House ... Why the Democrats will take back the White House

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The New York Times reports: Not that they need encouragement, but politicians were given the green light to lie about their opponents by the Washington Supreme Court the other day.

More than a dozen states have laws that make it unlawful to say false things about political candidates. The laws are, in practice, mainly aspirational. By a 5-to-4 vote on Thursday, the Washington Supreme Court added that the law in that state was also unconstitutional.

“The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter of truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” Justice James M. Johnson wrote for four of the justices in the majority. A dissenting justice, Barbara A. Madsen, wrote that “the majority’s decision is an invitation to lie with impunity.”

Justice Madsen added that the decision would help turn “political campaigns into contests of the best stratagems of lies and deceit, to the end that honest discourse and honest candidates are lost in the maelstrom.” -- Law on Lies by Politicians Is Found Unconstitutional - New York Times

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The New York Times reports: Supporters of Rudolph W. Giuliani and of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are embroiled in their first major affray of the political season over a ballot initiative on presidential electoral votes some 2,500 miles from the pancake houses of Skaneateles, N.Y., and the fire stations of Queens. ...

The proposed measure here would ask voters to apportion electoral votes by Congressional district, potentially giving the 2008 Republican nominee 20 of the state’s 55 votes — the rough equivalent of winning Illinois or Pennsylvania — in this otherwise reliably Democratic state. ...

Started by a Republican lawyer in California, the measure has been driven almost entirely by people who are associated with or have given money to Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

The effort to kill the initiative — executed with a swift fierceness almost unheard of for an initiative in such an early stage — has been led by a bevy of Clinton supporters, including a former Clinton White House official, prominent elected Democratic supporters and one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prolific fund-raisers. -- In Ballot Fight, California Gets a Taste of ’08

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The New York Times reports: Alarmed at the possibility that the Republican Party might pick Rudolph W. Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate.

The threat emerged from a group that broke away for separate discussions at a meeting Saturday in Salt Lake City of the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative networking group. Participants said the smaller group included James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps its most influential member; Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Richard A. Viguerie, the direct-mail pioneer; and dozens of other politically oriented conservative Christians.

Almost everyone present at the smaller group’s meeting expressed support for a written resolution stating that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third-party candidate,” participants said. -- Giuliani Inspires Threat of a Third-Party Run - New York Times

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Update: The front and back of the envelope and mailer are here. Thanks to Steve Wilson for sending them.

The Washington Post reports: Last week, Sen. Ken Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax) sent voters a manila envelope that bore the warning: "Notice: Your new Fairfax County income tax payment is due."

The sender, identified in bold letters, was the "Fairfax County Income Tax Authority."

There is no such branch of the county government, nor is there a county income tax.

When voters opened up the envelope, they found a flier from Cuccinelli attacking his Democratic opponent, Janet S. Oleszek, on taxes.

Cuccinelli charged Oleszek, a member of the Fairfax County School Board, with supporting the creation of a state sales tax on Internet purchases. ...

"It's just an attention gimmick. Political campaigns are marketing campaigns," Cuccinelli said. "People who have some degree of consternation by suddenly thinking they have a local income tax bill will remember that piece. The fact people remember it means that piece will be a success."

But the Oleszek campaign wants to know whether Cuccinelli's mailing violates the federal Deceptive Mailings Prevention Act of 1990.

Cuccinelli said the literature is legal because his name is on the outside of the envelope. -- Campaign Tactics Producing Angry Voters in Record Time - washingtonpost.com

Note: The statute is 39 USC 3001(h). The disclosure required is:
such matter bears on its face, in conspicuous and legible type in contrast by typography, layout, or color with other printing on its face, in accordance with regulations which the Postal Service shall prescribe, the following notice: “THIS PRODUCT OR SERVICE HAS NOT BEEN APPROVED OR ENDORSED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND THIS OFFER IS NOT BEING MADE BY AN AGENCY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.”, or a notice to the same effect in words which the Postal Service may prescribe...

I will be happy to post a copy of the envelope if the Cuccinelli campaign will send me one.

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: A Montgomery Circuit Court judge Wednesday threw out felony charges against former Secretary of State Nancy Worley, saying the statute governing the use of office to influence elections is too broad.

The state Attorney General's Office, which brought the charges against Worley, said it would immediately appeal Judge Truman Hobbs Jr.'s decision. ...

The Attorney General's Office based the felony charges on a statute that makes it unlawful for an official to use his or her office to influence "the vote or political action of any person."

The letter Worley distributed included an envelope and a bumper sticker and said Worley would be "honored" if employees contributed time or money to her campaign, adding that there would not be payback if they chose not to do so.

Worley's attorneys argued the statute was so broad that any elected official could be charged with a felony by referring to their office during a political campaign. -- Worley felony counts tossed- al.com

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The Birmingham News reports: The circuit judge who will preside over the trial of former Alabama Secretary of State Nancy Worley questioned Monday whether she should face felony charges.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Truman Hobbs Jr. said the law that Attorney General Troy King's office is using to bring felony charges against Worley is vague and overbroad.

"I'm real worried that this statute ... potentially criminalizes a lot of everyday conduct that happens all over the country," Hobbs said in a pre-trial meeting with defense attorneys and prosecutors. ...

The felony charges stem from another part of the same section of law, which says, "No person shall attempt to use his or her official authority or position for the purpose of influencing the vote or political action of any person." A violation is punishable by a $10,000 fine and two years in prison.

Hobbs said that under the section, a state official could face a misdemeanor charge for asking a subordinate for a $50,000 campaign contribution but face a felony charge for asking someone to put up a yard sign. -- Judge questions Worley charges- al.com

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From the Sunday New York Times' Week in Review: MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG of New York insisted yet again last week that he did not intend to run for president in 2008, even as he left the Republican Party to become an independent. Then, on Friday, he tweaked his language somewhat, simply saying, “I’m not going to be president.”

Which opens the door to a Swiftian modest proposal, one that might appeal to any billionaire independent presidential candidate who knows the art of a deal: Rather than try to win the White House outright — a long shot — an independent candidate could instead try for a king-making (or queen-making) bloc of votes in the Electoral College.

In doing so, a moneyed candidate like Mr. Bloomberg could advance his post-partisan national agenda — and gain a great deal of power — by introducing coalition politics to America’s system of government, through a power-sharing plan that catapults either the Republican or Democratic nominee to the presidency. Here’s how it might work:

With the nation divided into red and blue as it has been in the last two presidential elections, all a rich, self-financed candidate would have to do is win a big state (or two) to ensure having a king-making bloc of electoral votes: say, Florida (the decisive state in 2000), or Ohio (2004), or maybe New York (Mr. Bloomberg’s home state), or California (that of his friend, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger). -- President? Or Kingmaker?

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The New York Times reports: State investigators here are still trying to figure out who sabotaged Scott Kleeb’s campaign for Congress last November with a barrage of automated telephone calls to voters. The unauthorized calls, officials said, distorted Mr. Kleeb’s views and even used a recording of his voice — sometimes arriving in the middle of the night — with the greeting: “Hi, this is Scott Kleeb!”

Several Nebraska state lawmakers were so outraged by the shenanigans that they are pushing legislation that would impose some of the country’s most restrictive regulations on prerecorded campaign calls, both bogus and legitimate ones. Similar bills are in the works in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin and at least a dozen other states, prompted in large part by telephone calls authorized by campaigns during last year’s elections. ...

Nearly two-thirds of registered voters nationwide received the recorded telephone messages, which as political calls are exempt from federal do-not-call rules, leading up to the November elections, according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an independent research group. The calls, often known as robocalls, were the second most popular form of political communication, trailing only direct mail, the group said. ...

The automated phone calls, have been popular with candidates for years because they are cheap, easy to make and often highly effective. The Federal Communications Commission has rules requiring the callers to state their identity at the beginning of the message. A spokesman, Clyde Ensslin, said the commission had taken action against violators, but it did not separate political calls from commercial ones. -- States Seek Limits on ‘Robocalls’ in Campaigns

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Scott Keyes writes on Poltical Insider: Congressmen who hail from competitive districts are forced to run challenging reelection campaigns every two years, which in turn leaves them better prepared for the difficulties associated with a bid for higher office, right? That is, the closer a district's PVI is to zero, the better chance that congressman has of waging a successful bid for governor or senator because they must constantly win difficult elections and hone their campaigning skills in the process. Practice makes perfect.

However, looking at data from all the election since the 2000 redistricting, this does not appear to be the case. Congressmen from competitive districts do not appear to have any more success in their bids for higher office than those from non-competitive districts. Since 2002, 36 sitting congressmen have ran for higher office, half of whom won. However, representatives from competitive districts - those with a PVI of between D 5 and R 5 - were considerably less successful, winning just five of their thirteen races. Even in those states that swing states that Kerry or Bush carried with less than 55% of the vote, representatives from competitive districts won just three races and lost six. ...

Two possible reasons come to mind that would explain why representatives from competitive districts don't win their campaigns for higher office at a greater rate than other congressmen. First, if a representative must run a difficult race every two years, he or she has little opportunity to amass a large amount of money that would help in his or her bid for higher office. -- Political Insider: Competitive Districts Not a Stepping Stone for Higher Office

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The Birmingham News reports: A political consultant from Vestavia Hills admitted Tuesday to misdemeanor crimes that he ran a false ad during the 2006 Jefferson County Commission primary race, and he failed to register a political action committee.

Rick Spina, 48, said he pleaded guilty rather than going through the expense and trouble of fighting the charges in court.

The ad linked Jim Carns, a state legislator running for County Commission, with a slate of candidates headed by ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was running for governor.

The ad, which ran May 31 in The Birmingham News, said it was funded by a "political organization" called the Assembly of Republicans. -- Consultant fined for false 2006 political ad

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Mary Ann Akers writes on the Wash. Post blog The Sleuth: John Edwards's presidential campaign has modified its online fundraising approach to give visitors an "opt-out" option if they are just trying to send a sympathy note to Elizabeth Edwards about her cancer recurrence.

The change reflects an apparent attempt to separate the handling of Mrs. Edwards's illness from the incessant need for money to fund her husband's campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The adjustment comes after The Sleuth reported last week that the Edwards campaign was soliciting contributions from people who sent sympathy notes to Elizabeth Edwards through the Edwards campaign Web site. -- Edwards Campaign Modifies Online Fundraising Practice - The Sleuth

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In the years before the Scottish Parliament was established, I always thought of the Scottish National Party as a party working for the independence of Scotland. Perhaps I was wrong. Let's look at what they are campaigning on now.

The SNP still talks about independence (and it is linked from the home page), but the three main issues mentioned on its home page are:

Will the SNP push independence if it wins the election? The Sunday Herald reports:

A NATIONALIST-LED Executive at Holyrood [*] would stage an independence referendum in its first term, according to SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon.

In a keynote speech to her party's conference in Glasgow yesterday, Sturgeon denied reports last week that the SNP would "park" their principal policy.

Where does the SNP get its campaign funds? I will have to track that down, but a big donation just came from a controversial source. Again, as reported in the Sunday Herald:

SNP LEADER Alex Salmond was last night accused of pandering to "homophobia" by accepting a £500,000 donation from an anti-gay businessman.

The SNP yesterday confirmed that Brian Souter, who financed a high-profile campaign to keep Section 28, which banned "promoting" homo-sexuality in schools, was bankrolling their election hopes with a cheque for £500,000.

Can the SNP win? In early March, Angus Reid Global Monitor, a polling organization reported:

The Scottish National Party (SNP) remains the top political organization in Scotland, according to a poll by ICM Research published in The Scotsman. 34 per cent of respondents would give their local vote to the SNP in this year’s Scottish Parliament ballot.

The figures for all the parties were as follows (the first figure is for the local constituency vote, the second for the regional vote):

Scottish National Party ........34% 32%
Scottish Labour ...................29% 28%
Scottish Conservatives .......16% 15%
Scottish Liberal Democrats ..16% 17%
Scottish Green ........................ -- 5%

[*] "Holyrood" is the location of the Scottish Parliament.

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Exploring the Role of Internet Advertising in American Politics

This survey is designed to help us understand what Americans like you think about internet advertising, modern campaigns, and politics. We are very interested in your thoughts on this matter and greatly appreciate your participation.

Click here to take the survey: http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/crweber/TAKE%20SURVEY/internet_advertising.htm

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Adam Nagourney begins his reports in the New York Times with a mixed metaphor:
The trickle of states moving their 2008 presidential primaries to Feb. 5 has turned into an avalanche, forcing all the presidential campaigns to reconsider every aspect of their nominating strategy — where to compete, how to spend money, when to start television advertising — as they gird for the prospect of a 20-state national Primary Day.

In the last two weeks, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, dispatched the director of his political action committee to run his primary campaign in California, where a bill to move the primary to Feb. 5 is on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat, announced that he had won the endorsement of Richard J. Codey, a former acting governor of New Jersey, testimony to the state’s new status as it readies to shift its primary to Feb. 5 from June.

Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, held a rally the other day in Texas, and aides to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the New York Republican, said staff members would be sent to California, Florida and Missouri, as both candidates prepare for expected Feb. 5 primaries in those states. ...

For the most part, the candidates and their aides cannot quite figure out what all this turmoil means for them. The changes, which are shaping up to be the most substantial alteration ever to a campaign calendar in a single election cycle, have heightened the volatility of the most wide-open presidential race in 50 years, one with large and well-financed fields of contenders. -- Early Primary Rush Upends ’08 Campaign Plans - New York Times

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AP reports: Many state lawmakers around the country want to slam down the receiver on pesky automated phone calls like the ones that interrupted suppers before last November's election.

On Thursday, Idaho joined Missouri, Maryland, Florida, Connecticut, Nebraska, Tennessee and North Carolina, among other states, which since November have agitated for more oversight over automatic dialing-announcing devices, or "robocalls."

A bill in the Idaho House would require political and charitable organizations at the start of every automated call to disclose who is behind the message, and how they can be reached. Sponsors say giving those on the other end of the line more information allows them to choose to listen further -- or hang up. ...

A handful of states, including Indiana, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota and Arkansas, already have laws restricting political robocalls. -- SR.com: Idaho Legislature: Bill would limit 'robocalls'

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AP reports: After an election season of automated calls and constituent complaints, senators voted Tuesday to restrict how politicians campaign.

The Senate by voice vote approved a bill that would expand the state's no-call list to include "robo-calls" from automatic dialing machines. The list, which is managed and enforced by the attorney general, also would be expanded to cover cell phone calls and text messages and faxes, along with traditional land-line telephone calls.

Sponsoring Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, said the bill expands protections for those who already have said they do not want to be called.

The bill would require a dialer to ask permission to play a recorded message and a declaration of who is paying for political solicitations. Those paying for the messages would also need to register with a state ethics commission or the Federal Election Commission. -- Senate approves bill restricting robo-calls

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Political Insider has the statement of Sen. Edwards on the blogger controvery. -- Political Insider: Edwards Statement on Bloggers

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Media Matters says on its website: The New York Times and Associated Press have both reported criticism by Catholic League president Bill Donohue of two bloggers hired by John Edwards' presidential campaign; Donohue contends that the bloggers are "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

But neither the Times article, by reporter John M. Broder, nor the AP article, by writer Nedra Pickler, included any mention of Donohue's own history of vulgar, trash-talking bigotry -- or of Donohue's decision to dismiss anti-Catholic bigotry on the part of a key anti-Kerry operative in 2004. -- Media Matters - NY Times, AP reported Donohue's criticism of Edwards campaign bloggers -- but ignored Donohue's own controversial comments and inconsistent outrage

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The New York Times reports: Two bloggers hired by John Edwards to reach out to liberals in the online world have landed his presidential campaign in hot water for doing what bloggers do — expressing their opinions in provocative and often crude language.

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions. ...

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

Mr. Edwards’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers. -- Edwards’s Bloggers Cross the Line, Critic Says - New York Times

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The Washington Post reports: Starting as early as last June, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was hiring staffers and consultants in New Hampshire and Iowa and building the foundation for his 2008 presidential bid at a time when those in early battleground states typically get a breather from national politics.

Campaign filings released last week show that he spent more than $375,000 on staffing and consulting, getting an early jump in those states. One campaign cycle earlier, a single candidate -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) -- had started hiring in-state advisers at that point, and by the end of 2002 he had spent only $4,200 paying those aides. ...

To understand the impulses behind this fundraising race, look no further than activity in a cluster of early caucus and primary states. Democrats competing for their party's nomination will face a rapid-fire succession of contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in January. Republicans will compete in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. A number of states -- including behemoths such as California and Florida -- are seeking to move up their primaries to early February. ...

To compete in those states, candidates are already confronting a daunting array of new expenses and demands that is creating a presidential sticker shock. -- In Campaign 2008, Candidates Starting Earlier, Spending More - washingtonpost.com

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The Washington Post reports: After months of work, the momentous day for Peter Feddo and his colleagues at the "draft Hillary" movement had finally arrived: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's formation of an exploratory committee meant a presidential run was imminent.

So what now?

Draft committees are a peculiar political animal; they exist to start building excitement for a presidential candidate who hasn't even decided to run. They launch Web sites, collect names of potential supporters and raise money in anticipation of a presidential bid. ...

Under federal election rules, a draft committee can spend the money on behalf of a politician, as long as it doesn't coordinate efforts with that candidate. But the committee can donate no more than the individual contribution limit of $2,300 for the primary and $2,300 for the general election, according to Michelle Ryan, an FEC spokeswoman. -- When a Draft Group's Candidate Announces, What Comes Next? - washingtonpost.com

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Why are articles with titles like this, Obama's Appeal to Blacks Remains an Open Question, even considered newsworthy?

The election turns on the votes of all the people -- or of the Supreme Court.

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The Washington Post reports (in print and via a video): By noon on Jan. 10, Matt Rhoades and Kevin Madden knew they had a problem.

The two men handle communications for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's presidential exploratory committee and had been told about a video flying around the Internet that spliced clips from Romney's 1994 debate with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). In it, Romney (R), then running for the Senate in a losing campaign against Kennedy, voiced support for abortion rights and gay rights -- positions he has since renounced.

Romney's political inner circle, alerted to the threat, decided to strike back quickly. Less than eight hours after the attack appeared, a video of Romney rebutting the charges was being sent to his supporters and to Republican blogs.

"In a viral information age, a distortion of the record can quickly sink in as fact," Madden said. "It was very important to show that what was an anonymous attack eventually became a moment of strength for our campaign." -- On the Electronic Campaign Trail - washingtonpost.com

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With Sen. Sam Brownback's announcement, the Wall Street Journal's Circling the Oval Office has been updated.

Update: And for Gov. Bill Richardson's exploratory committee.

Second Update: CQ Politics has a list, the "2008 White House Derby: The Field So Far." The list was last updated on Saturday before Brownback and Richardson announcements.

If someone knows of a frequently-updated chart on the Internet with links to these candidates' websites, please let me know. I will link to it.

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WSJ.com's "Circling the Oval Office" has been updated with the announcement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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Trapper John at DailyKos lists the GOP candidates for President. --
Daily Kos: GOP Cattle Call 2008: Week of 01/15/07

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AP has a list of declared and thinking-about-it candidates for president. -- The 2008 presidential field at-a-glance - Yahoo! News

Update: The Wall Street Journal has a frequently-updated list of those who are running, those who are "mentioned," and those who were "mentioned" but have said they are not running, at Circling the Oval Office.

And don't overlook DailyKos's "Dem Cattle Call 2008" which he updates every week.

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The Birmingham News writes about my friend Jerome Gray's retirement: When they were students at Conecuh County Training School, neither Joe Reed nor Jerome Gray foresaw a future in which they would team up to break barriers to black participation in Alabama politics.

But when they saw a chance for that future, they seized it with a vengeance. The evidence is in the numbers: Alabama has 870 black elected officials at all levels of government, more than in every state except neighboring Mississippi. The numbers of blacks in Alabama's state and local governing bodies generally mirror the percentage of blacks in the state and local populations.

"We have achieved ... parity or equity in virtually every chamber of government," Gray said recently.

A lot of people - lawyers and grass-roots activists among them - had a hand in achieving that result. But two of the primary players were Reed, as chairman of the black Alabama Democratic Conference, and Gray, as ADC field director. Now Gray, at 68, has decided that, after 27 years, his playing days are over. People who worked with him and against him are saying they may not see his like again. -- Voting rights powerhouse Gray lays aside `quiet work'

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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports: [Democratic whip, Sen. Michael A. O'Pake] suggested a second idea that would need a constitutional change. He wants to have the new congressional districts redrawn, after the 2010 census, by a nonpartisan group called the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, which already redraws the state House and Senate district lines.

Currently, congressional district lines are redrawn by the majority party in the Legislature. The last time, after the 2000 census, Democrats complained that Republicans redrew the congressional lines to try to ensure re-election of GOP incumbents. The current system lets the majority party in the Legislature "redraw congressional districts with a partisan bias," Mr. O'Pake said.

A third idea wouldn't need a constitutional change. Mr. O'Pake wants to make it easier for state residents to block "robo-calls" by politicians seeking election -- the automated phone calls by office holders or their supporters urging people to vote for them. He would let people add such calls to the state's Do Not Call list, an idea first proposed last fall by Rep. Michael McGeehan, D-Philadelphia. He also is vowing to push for it again.

The changes to the constitution would first have to be passed in the 2007-08 session, which just started, and then again in the 2009-10 session in order to get on the November 2009 statewide ballot, at the earliest. -- Dem leader wants to reduce size of Pa. legislature

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AP reports: As candidates prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the Internet is the new Main Street. An estimated 70 percent of adults in the United States travel the digital highway, still a cheap and largely unregulated medium.

Reaching those potential voters and donors has become an important part of modern politicking. Candidates aggressively compete for the talents of the most creative geeks in politics and develop new ways to exploit the Net.

Republicans have mastered e-mail as the new form of direct-mail campaigns, raising money and pushing a GOP message. Democrats have excelled at raising cash through small-scale donations and making the Net their version of talk radio. ...

McCain, the potential front-runner for the 2008 GOP nomination, is among the most tech-savvy could-be White House candidates today. He has retained many hands from his 2000 bid and has recruited some of the top names in online campaigning. -- Candidates turn to Web to reach voters - Yahoo! News

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AP reports: The Nebraska Public Service Commission is investigating allegations about automated phone calls targeting former congressional candidate Scott Kleeb during the last days of the campaign.

The investigation ultimately could lead to allegations that federal laws were broken.

Kleeb, a Democratic ranch hand, lost to Republican state Sen. Adrian Smith in the race for the 3rd District seat.

Kleeb's offices were flooded in the final days of the race with complaints from people upset about receiving repeated, automated phone calls with poor-quality recordings of Kleeb's voice. -- Nebraska probes election calling

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Wired News reports: The brains behind a doomed antispam service are turning their technology into an online swarming tool for activists, hoping to subject politicians and government agencies to the kind of mass pressure Blue Frog once inflicted on spammers. ...

Now founders Aran Reshef and Amir Hirsh are reincarnating their software to turn armies of internet users into political activists. Their new Collactive platform takes the drudgery out of grass-roots action, letting armchair activists fill out online petitions, file comments in rule-making proceedings, send letters to their representatives in Congress and seed collaborative web forums with sympathetic news items -- all with the push of a button.

The Collactive software is offered as a generic distribution to organizations, who then configure it for a particular political issue and give it to users as a downloadable software package or Firefox plug-in.

Once it's installed, the organizers can send alerts to users or update the software with scripts that know how to take particular actions, such as automatically filling in feedback forms on a politician's website. End users can also forward e-mail alerts to their friends, who have the option of installing the software themselves and joining the network. -- Wired News: Spammer Slammer Targets Politics

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The Stamford Advocate reports: The U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general have cleared former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont and his supporters of any role in the crash of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign Web site hours before last summer's Democratic primary.

"The investigation has revealed no evidence the problems the Web site experienced were the result of criminal conduct," said Tom Carson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal confirmed the joint investigation "found no evidence of tampering or sabotage warranting civil action by my office." Both men declined to provide additional information, such as what might have happened to the site. -- The Advocate - Lamont camp cleared in hacking of Lieberman Web site

Thanks to DailyKos for the link.

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The New York Times Magazine's annual "Year in Ideas" issue has a couple of articles of interest to election mavens (did I use that term correctly, Bill Safire?): In their book “The End of Southern Exceptionalism,” Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth. In the postwar era, they note, the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the G.O.P. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats. (This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.) -- The Myth of "the Southern Strategy" - New York Times

After analyzing data from Arizona’s 2000 general election, the Stanford researchers found that voters were more likely to support raising the state sales tax to support education if they voted in schools. This bias remained even when results were controlled for voters’ political views and demographics. In a follow-up laboratory study, subjects were asked to vote on a number of initiatives, including California’s 2004 stem-cell-research financing proposition. Before casting a vote, each subject was primed with a picture of a school, church or generic building. Voters were less likely to support stem-cell initiatives when presented with images of a church. -- Voting-Booth Feng Shui

Comment: About a year ago, a pol I had known for a long time called and asked me to come up with a theory to attack voting places in churches. He was convinced that the Christian Right would be turning out its people to vote in those polling places and wanted them moved. I did not come up with a theory that passed the "straight-face" test. My friend the pol lost his election. Maybe I should have use the theory of the guy in Florida. (On the other hand, the magnitude of his loss could not be blamed on just the Christian Right.)

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The New York Times reports: Campaign finance reports filed this week have led to second-guessing about whether the National Republican Senatorial Committee borrowed too little for its final all-out push for its candidates.

At least two Republican Senate candidates lost by just a few thousand votes, and reversing just one defeat would have enabled the Republicans to hold the Senate.

As of Nov. 27, the Republican senatorial committee had raised $87 million since the election cycle began in 2005 and ended up about $1.2 million in debt.

By comparison, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which lacked the inherent fund-raising advantage of controlling the Senate, raised $119 million in this election cycle and ended up $5.4 million in debt.

Candidates and parties routinely borrow at the end of close races and then pay down the debt after the election. The final figures, and especially the low debts, left some Republicans grumbling privately that their Senate committee’s leader, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, had failed to give it her all. -- G.O.P. Draws Fire on Senate Race Spending - New York Times

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The Baltimore Sun reports: New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer is pressing U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to justify his department's decision not to investigate whether Maryland Republicans purposely misled voters on Election Day by circulating voter guides listing top state GOP candidates as part of a "Democratic Sample Ballot."

"The right to vote is perhaps our most essential civil right, the wellspring of our democracy," Schumer said in a letter sent yesterday to Gonzales. "Unfortunately, the mid-term elections held on November 7, 2006, were tarnished by countless dirty tricks and ugly tactics. The ploy used in Maryland stands out for its sheer cynicism and brazenness."

Campaign committees for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Lt. Gov Michael S. Steele, then a U.S. Senate candidate, jointly sponsored the sample ballots. African-Americans were bused in from Pennsylvania to distribute those fliers and others at polling locations in Prince George's County and Baltimore. First lady Kendel Ehrlich reportedly welcomed the volunteers to Maryland. -- Schumer presses for inquiry of GOP tactics - baltimoresun.com

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The Justice Department says it won't investigate misleading fliers that Republicans distributed in Maryland on Election Day.

The fliers promoted the candidacies of Governor Robert Ehrlich and Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele.

Acting Assistant Attorney General James Clinger says there's not enough legal basis to support such an investigation. -- Justice Department Won't Investigate Flier Distribution

Thanks to Talking Point Memo for the link.

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AP reports: The Justice Department says it won't investigate misleading fliers that Republicans distributed in Maryland on Election Day.

The fliers promoted the candidacies of Governor Robert Ehrlich and Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele.

Acting Assistant Attorney General James Clinger says there's not enough legal basis to support such an investigation. -- Justice Department Won't Investigate Flier Distribution

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CAPolitics reports: The Democrats who will be senators in the 110th Congress beginning in January have spent the week after Election Day choosing their leadership team and discussing agenda items for their return to the majority.

But they also are taking a glance back at the 2006 campaign that awarded them the six-seat net gain they needed to take control — and decrying negative campaign tactics they pinned on Republican candidates. ...

Speaking on the matter with characteristic bluntness was New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer (news, bio, voting record), who spearheaded the party’s national takeover campaign as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Schumer accused Republicans of “despicable” tactics in the 2006 election cycle, alleging that their operatives called Democrats and lied to them about the location of their polling places. ...

Schumer said he and Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record), who headed the party’s successful House takeover effort as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, were making a list of the “abusive practices” used by Republicans, which both Reid and Schumer contended were unique to their partisan counterparts. ...

Schumer called for better campaign finance disclosure and said the party leadership would consider civil and criminal penalties and the possibility of creating a special division of the Justice Department to prosecute such infractions. -- Democrats Say They Will Push to Require Cleaner Campaigns - Yahoo! News

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The New York Times reports: Election Day has come and gone, and now comes the true test for candidates: how well they clean up after themselves. With a bumper crop of more than 20 million campaign signs this election season, the race has begun.

“Only shallow candidates have lots of volunteers ready to put the signs out but not enough volunteers ready to take them down,” said Steve Grubbs, a former Iowa legislator and founder of VictoryStore.com, which sold more than five million yard and roadway signs this year, double the number from 2004. “It’s a lot of signs to deal with, but they’re slackers if they can’t get them down within a week of the election.”

For some, that is too long to wait.

In the last year, county and local officials in at least nine states have imposed new restrictions on where political signs can go and how long they can be left out. -- After Vote, Public Demands Change: Take Down the Signs - New York Times

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The Washington Post has a long article on the misleading sample ballot distributed by the Republicans on Election Day. --
GOP Fliers Apparently Were Part Of Strategy - washingtonpost.com

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The Washington Post reports: There is no doubt that Democrats did well on Tuesday, capturing almost 30 seats in the House, six seats in the Senate and control of both chambers. But was it the Democratic "wave" that so many had believed was about to sweep the country?

Republican leaders said it was not. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), who led the GOP's House campaign committee, said it was simply "a matter of history repeating itself." On the day of the elections, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman warned of a "six-year itch." ...

But political scientists say that assessment of Tuesday's results ignores an important change in recent years. They say Republicans have re-engineered the political map, stuffing congressional districts with supporters to make the districts reliably pro-GOP. The financial and electoral advantages of incumbency, moreover, have reached new heights.

The election results are "actually huge because of the structural advantage Republicans had going into the election. Democrats had very little low-hanging fruit," said Gary C. Jacobson, a scholar of congressional elections at the University of California at San Diego. -- How Many Wins Make Up a 'Wave'? - washingtonpost.com

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The Guardian (UK) reports: Labour has enlisted one of the engineers of this week's Democratic victory in the US midterm elections in an attempt to boost its flagging fortunes before the local elections in May.

Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate and one of the men credited with masterminding the trouncing of the Republicans, will visit the UK next month to brief party officials about his pioneering campaigning techniques.

"The Welsh, Scottish and local elections next year are our midterms," said Hazel Blears, Labour's chair. "It has to be done differently for us to carry on being successful ... We're looking at how [the Democrats] have upped their game."

Labour is particularly interested in the Democrats' style of targeting grassroots voters through low-key meetings in homes. "We want to look at their experience in campaigning, getting out the vote, holding house meetings where people can come together ... You don't want to transplant American politics, but there's a lot we can share," said Ms Blears.

Many political observers will regard the drafting in of Mr Dean as bizarre, given that the Democratic victory was largely founded on voters' anger about the war in Iraq - the very subject which has alienated many Labour supporters and on which Mr Dean has been so outspoken. -- Labour drafts in US election architect for 'our midterms' | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

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Paul Kiel writes on TPM Muckraker: As we did our best to document, the National Republican Congressional Committee was responsible for repetitive, often harrassing robo calls in more than two dozen districts across the country in the runup to the election.

In at least seven of those districts, the Democrat failed to unseat the incumbent by only a couple thousand votes. The NRCC's calls may have been the difference in those races. ...

The NRCC's calls, you'll remember, began by saying something like "Hi, I'm calling with information about [the Democratic candidate]," then continued to give negative information about the candidate. They did not identify the true source of the calls until the very end, when they informed the listener (if he/she bothered to stay on the line until the end of the call), that the NRCC had paid for it. Voters reported being called again and again. A number of Democratic campaigns reported receiving complaints from voters who thought that the calls were coming from the Democrat, because of the calls' lead-in. We catalogued a number of the calls here.

Democrats have asked the FEC, FCC and Justice Department to probe the calls. DCCC spokesman Bill Burton told me that the Dems are still "committed to pursuing the issue of these calls" and are "discussing the next steps.... We are absolutely not letting this drop." -- TPMmuckraker November 10, 2006 04:39 PM

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The Washington Post reports: The misleading fliers distributed on Election Day by poor, out-of-state workers suggesting that top Republican candidates had the backing of key black Democrats do not appear to be illegal but could have a lasting impact on the Republican Party's efforts to attract African American voters, political experts said yesterday.

The fliers included a "Democratic Sample Ballot" suggesting that voters back Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele, both Republicans. Entitled "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats," it pictured three influential Democrats -- Wayne K. Curry, Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson and Kweisi Mfume -- and said at the bottom, "These are OUR choices." Curry had endorsed Steele but not Ehrlich, and neither Johnson nor Mfume had endorsed either candidate. ...

State law does not generally prohibit making misleading claims on campaign literature, several experts said yesterday, but election law might have been violated if the workers who distributed the fliers were hired by a political committee that is not registered to engage in campaign finance activity.

A spokeswoman for the campaign, Shareese DeLeaver, said Tuesday that the group "Democrats for Ehrlich" had arranged for the distribution of the fliers. But according to the State Board of Elections, the only registered organization that has used a similar name is "Democrats for (Robert) Ehrlich," an Ehrlich campaign committee that was disbanded nearly four years ago. -- Misleading Fliers May Hurt GOP Among Black Voters - washingtonpost.com

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AP reports: Two Democratic members of Congress from Michigan are seeking an investigation into automated telephone calls to voters placed by the National Republican Congressional Committee in dozens of House races nationwide.

In a letter sent late Monday to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission, Reps. John Conyers and John Dingell said the calls are unethical and could be illegal.

"These misleading calls are made late in the evening, or during the night, in an effort to generate anger at the Democratic candidate, who is in no way associated with this harassment. In fact, the calls are being funded by the National Republican Campaign Committee, which has reportedly provided $600,000 to fund this deception," the letter said.

Dingell and Conyers said the calls, some of which start by saying, "I'm calling with information about" the Democratic candidate, violate an FCC rule that says all taped calls must, "at the beginning of the message, state clearly the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call." -- Portsmouth Herald Local News: Dems seek inquiry of GOP taped calls

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The Washington Post reports: This year's heavy volume of automated political phone calls has infuriated countless voters and triggered sharp complaints from Democrats, who say the Republican Party has crossed the line in bombarding households with recorded attacks on candidates in tight House races nationwide. ...

Democrats cited federal records indicating that the NRCC recently spent about $600,000 in at least 45 contested House districts for robo-calls, which are among the least expensive campaign tools. The brief calls typically begin with a speaker offering "some information" about the Democratic nominee and then immediately accusing the nominee of seeking to raise taxes, among other perceived wrongs.

Many voters hang up as soon as a robo-call begins -- without waiting for the criticisms or the NRCC sign-off at the end -- so they think it was placed by the Democratic candidate named at the start, said Sarah Feinberg, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Our candidates are inundated with phone calls from furious Democrats and independents saying . . . 'I'm outraged and I'm not going to vote for you anymore,' " she said.

Feinberg said some voters have received robo-calls late at night, despite federal rules barring such calls after 9 p.m. NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said his organization ends all calls by 9 nightly.

Democrats also cited Federal Communications Commission guidelines saying the originators of automated calls must identify themselves at the beginning of each call. Republican Party lawyers, however, said the requirement does not apply to political nonprofit organizations. They rebuffed a "cease and desist" letter sent yesterday by the DCCC. -- It's a Candidate Calling. Again. - washingtonpost.com

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AP reports: The National Republican Congressional Committee agreed to stop placing automated telephone calls to New Hampshire residents on the federal do-not-call list, a state official said.

The committee voluntarily agreed Sunday to stop calling homes on the registry after a citizen complained to the state attorney general's office, which then spoke with the GOP group's lawyer in Washington.

Under state statute, political campaigns are allowed to contact people on the do-not-call list, but cannot use automated recordings.

Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch said households that are not on the registry may continue to receive the calls, which criticize Democratic congressional challenger Paul Hodes in the tight race with Republican Rep. Charles Bass. ...

One of the calls features a woman who opens by saying "Hello. I'm calling with information about Paul Hodes." She goes on to criticize his position on taxes and ends by saying the call was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to a tape recording released by the state Democratic Party.

According to the Federal Communications Commission Web site, automated calls must state the identity of the business, individual, or other entity making the call at the beginning of the message. Burgos said the messages comply with all federal laws, but declined to comment specifically on the placement of the sponsor message.-- N.H. makes GOP stop some automated calls - Yahoo! News

Comment: I found the following on the FCC site:

Calls using artificial or prerecorded voice messages - including those that do not use autodialers - may not be made to residential telephone numbers except in the following cases:

* emergency calls needed to ensure the consumer's health and safety;
* calls for which you have given prior consent;
* non-commercial calls;
* calls which don't include or introduce any unsolicited advertisements or constitute telephone solicitations;
* calls by, or on behalf of, tax-exempt non-profit organizations;or
* calls from entities with which you have an established business relationship.

Wouldn't a call from a political group be "non-commercial"?

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The New York Times reports: An automated voice at the other end of the telephone line asks whether you believe that judges who “push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy” should be controlled. If your reply is “yes,” the voice lets you know that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Montana, Jon Tester, is not your man.

In Maryland, a similar question-and-answer sequence suggests that only the Republican Senate candidate would keep the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In Tennessee, another paints the Democrat as wanting to give foreign terrorists “the same legal rights and privileges” as Americans.

Using a telemarketing tactic that is best known for steering consumers to buy products, the organizers of the political telephone calls say they have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in five states over the last several weeks in a push to win votes for Republicans. Democrats say the calls present a distorted picture.

The Ohio-based conservatives behind the new campaign, who include current and former Procter & Gamble managers, say the automated system can reach vast numbers of people at a fraction of the cost of traditional volunteer phone banks and is the most ambitious political use of the telemarketing technology ever undertaken. -- New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path - New York Times

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The Los Angeles Times reports: The 10 million members of Facebook.com — the social networking website that's a fixture on college campuses — aren't using it just to check out potential dates or keep track of old high school buddies. They're increasingly using it, and other Internet tools, to get involved in politics.

"He ain't Kinky, he's my governor" is a Facebook group in support of Kinky Friedman, the country singer running for governor of Texas. Polls show the independent candidate in fourth place, but that doesn't discourage the group's 20,000 members, most of whom are younger than 25. Messages on the group's blog urge: "Grab friends and family and take them to the poll!" and "Wear T-shirts!"

Young people, many of whom have used computers since elementary school, are considered a particularly rich target for expanded online political outreach: Every day, nearly two-thirds of all 18- to 30-year-olds check their e-mail, and one-quarter use online communication tools such as Facebook or instant messaging, according to a Young Voter Strategies Battleground Poll conducted in May.

In September, Facebook set up "Election Pulse" — a rundown of Senate, House and governors' races. "We wanted to do something to increase the political voice of the people on Facebook, a group that tends to be on the younger side of the electorate and which is often underrepresented in Washington and state capitals," said Ezra Callahan, project manager for the site's new politics initiative. -- Web could give young voters a voice - Los Angeles Times

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AP reports: The grainy black-and-white images appear on television, while ominous music plays in the background. It's another in a blizzard of negative political ads and before you consciously know it, the message takes hold of your brain. You may not want it to, but it works just about instantly.

In fact, the ad's effects on the brain "are actually shocking," says UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Marco Iacoboni.

Iacoboni's brain imaging research from the 2004 presidential campaign revealed that viewers lost empathy for their own candidate once he was attacked.

Scientists around the country are logging the emotional and physical effects of negative political ads. Iacoboni tracked parts of the middle brain that lit up in brain scans when people watched their favorite candidates get attacked. Other scientists hooked up wires to measure frowns and smiles before the meaning of the ads' words sunk in. Mostly, researchers found that negative ads tend to polarize and make it less likely that supporters of an attacked candidate will vote. -- Scientists track effects of negative ads - Yahoo! News

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AP reports (in a story about Chief Justice Nabers' recusal from an oil company case): In a related matter, attorneys for dog track operator Milton McGregor have asked [Chief Justice Drayton] Nabers to step aside from hearing an appeal involving the legality of electronic sweepstakes machines at the Birmingham dog track.

Their request, filed Thursday, cites Nabers' campaign ads where he accuses his opponent of taking money from gambling interests and says he has "fought against the gambling bosses."

A Jefferson County judge ruled that the sweepstakes games were legal, but Jefferson County District Attorney David Barber appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which has not yet ruled. --

Note: The Alablawg discusses the same article and makes some good points.

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Contrapositive has posted the Election Night Cheat Sheet -- an hour-by-hour guide to election night 2006.

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The Los Angeles Times reports: Unions, corporations and wealthy individuals have pumped nearly $300 million this year into unregulated political groups, funding dozens of aggressive and sometimes shadowy campaigns independent of party machines.

The groups, both liberal and conservative, air TV and radio spots, conduct polls, run phone banks, canvass door-to-door and stage get-out-the-vote rallies, with no oversight by the Federal Election Commission. Set up as tax-exempt "issue advocacy" committees, they cannot explicitly endorse candidates. But they can do everything short of telling voters how to mark their ballots.

Because they can accept unlimited donations from any source, the committees — known as 527s — have emerged as the favored vehicle for millionaires and interest groups seeking to set the political agenda. ...

Named for a section of the IRS code, 527s have been around for years but became a political force in 2004 after the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — also known as the McCain--Feingold Bill — limited donations to political parties. Groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on the right and America Coming Together on the left contributed $600 million that year, with a heavy focus on the presidential race. -- UNREGULATED GROUPS WIELD MILLIONS TO SWAY VOTERS - Los Angeles Times

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The New York Times reports: Hoping against the odds to keep a prize Republican Congressional seat from falling to the Democrats next week, President Bush travels to his home state on Monday for a rally in the district long led by his Texas ally Tom DeLay. ...

But discord broke out Friday after Ms. Sekula-Gibbs showed up inside a Sugar Land polling place where voters were casting early ballots, setting off charges by Texas Democrats and the Lampson camp that she had willfully broken the law by campaigning inside a polling place. Ms. Sekula-Gibbs said she had been campaigning outside and briefly went in to use the restroom and inquire about voter turnout.

In one of the many oddities of the race, Ms. Sekula-Gibbs, 53, is running twice, as her campaign jingle, “Vote Twice for Shelley,” to the tune of “Roll Out the Barrel,” reminds voters. She is on the ballot with three other Republicans and a Libertarian in the special election that Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, waited until the last minute to call to fill Mr. DeLay’s unexpired term until January. And she is a write-in candidate against Mr. Lampson as well as a Libertarian and two other write-ins in the general election to the 2007-8 Congress.

Only the Libertarian candidate, Bob Smither, 62, an engineer, appears on the ballot in both elections. -- A Tangle of a Race to Fill DeLay's Old Seat - New York Times

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The Washington Post reports: While Republican Bob Corker and Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. slug it out in the Tennessee Senate race, voters there are already going to the polls in record numbers. Early voting began in the state Oct. 18, and turnout is reported to be especially high in Ford's home town of Memphis. ...

Second, to counter the Republicans' potent turnout operation, Democrats have zeroed in on 200,000 voters who party officials believe could push Ford over the top. These "drop-off" voters show up during general-election years but tend to skip nonpresidential contests.

About three-quarters of the Democratic drop-off voters are African Americans, and many live in Shelby County, where Memphis is located and where For